Flare Path (Richmond Theatre – Tour)

If anyone was qualified to write an RAF drama it was Terence Rattigan, a Second World War tail-gunner who understood the perils of aerial warfare better than most. In 1942, well before The Browning Version and Separate Tables, he wrote Flare Path, a play that had languished all but forgotten until Trevor Nunn revived it in 2011 yet one that's only a handful of false emotions from bearing comparison with Journey's End.

No doubt today's playwrights and directors would find physical ways of representing bombing raids and enemy attrition; but Rattigan was a man of his time and so the drama never leaves the hotel lobby where airmen await their next call along with their wives, girlfriends and adulterers.

Unfortunately Justin Audibert's new touring revival never quite takes off. It's stylishly staged, with a neatly flexible touring set by Hayley Grindle that incorporates a nod to the title into its floor design, but her flare parquet is less wooden than some of the acting. The play's power – which, coming from such a buttoned-up era, depends crucially on what goes on behind the eyes – is enfeebled by the persistent absence of sufficient emotional undertow between the players.

Alastair Whatley gives a gripping, nuanced account of a shell-shocked cuckold that merely highlights the extent to which some of his colleagues fail to measure up. He is fortunate that Teddy undergoes the play's most interesting character development; however, he needs convincing partners to carry it off and these are in short supply. Olivia Hallinan as his wife matches him in their shared moments but struggles (through no fault of her own) to stoke any sparks with Leon Ockenden's Hollywood-glamorous lover.

The ever-excellent Philip Franks as an affable squadron leader channels Richard Attenborough to good effect, but although he utters the play's most cynical line "Supposing there is an 'after the war'…" (how startling that must have sounded in 1942) for the most part he's little more than comic relief from the prevailing themes of marital angst and fear of loss.

There are moments in Flare Path that should stop the heart if not the show, but they're missing in action.

Flare Path is on a national tour until November