Keith Jochim convinces as a panic-stricken Nixon

Keith Jochim's sweating, jowly Nixon reels around the sort of manic options open to the most powerful man on earth, from nukes to coups.

However, Tim Donoghue's Kissinger is not playing ball with the president's pitches, his outward containment a mask for his own desperation to salvage power from the wreckage of Nixon's fall.

In an era when MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was the acronym the world over, Lees toys with the madness under the political gloss to brilliant effect.

Both Nixon and Kissinger are like two kids caught doing something naughty, cajoling and squabbling as they try to both get off the hook, either together or at the expense of the other.

So Tricky Dicky taunts Kissinger with the spectre of Ford giving his job to Al Haig should Nixon fail to survive, while Kissinger dangles the judgement of history in front of a master desperate to be remembered as a great statesman.

Surreal comic touches run through the 90 minutes, such as the duo's repeated hammy impersonations of the likes of Mao and Brezhnev whenever the copious intake of booze sparks more misty-eyed reminiscences.

Superb performances from Jochim and Donoghue

Though the laughs come thick and fast throughout, Lees is wise enough to add some darkness to the comedy in a way someone like Beckett - the master of the two-hander black comedy - would have admired.

Jochim's Nixon weeps as he admits that perhaps there is more than saving one's skin, as he forces Kissinger to reel off the death toll from his past actions from South East Asia through Chile to the deaths of US anti-war protesters.

While an acquaintance with the Vietnam War era definitely adds to the enjoyment, Lee's lively but ascerbic script and superb performances by both Jochim and Donoghue make this a thought-provoking, sparkling outing.

And at just 90 minutes long, it leaves plenty of time for after-show debate.

Nixon's Nixon is playing at the Comedy Theatre, London