They used to head for the pub after a production; now it's home to a cup ofcocoa. But the electricity hasn't changed between actors Anita Reeves and Emmet Bergin since their last two-hander, 25 years ago. Even after that length of time, they still knock sparks off each other.

For two actors appearing in a play in which they do not converse until the final few minutes, Anita Reeves and Emmet Bergin are a non-stop double-act."You tell the story." "No, you tell the story." "Ah, go on, you tell the story . . ." The banter, one presumes, has picked up largely unchanged from the last time they worked together. It was 25 years ago when, as part of the long-defunct Irish Theatre Company, they toured the theatres, halls and cinemas of Ireland. They were part of a company bringing theatre to places where the sets wouldn't always fit the stages. Where the dressing rooms didn't always fit the cast. Where the rooms didn't always fit the crowds.

"It was the highest quality rep," says Reeves. "The highest quality costumes and sets. The people in the country weren't used to seeing this. You'd have the situation where you'd arrive in a smaller venue to find the set was taken away, but you wouldn't realise this, so you'd just arrive on to find that the chair you were used to sitting on wasn't there, because they'd taken it away to make room. You became so good at your craft that it didn't matter. You adjusted. You could do the play up a tree."

Some things change, some things remain the same. They are returning to the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire for The Unexpected Man, but the last time they were here it was the old cinema, not this gleaming new construction.

"I'll tell you a difference," says Reeves. "The last time we would have worked together, we would go straight to the pub. Now, it's home to our cocoa."

"Glasses!" adds Bergin. "I notice that we're both reading the scripts over the top of the glasses and I think, 'hang on'."

They appeared in so many plays together that neither remembers quite what the last play was. They haven't, however, forgotten Village Wooing. During the summer of 1977, they toured George Bernard Shaw's play around the country, starting in Ballina and ending with a four-week run in Dublin's Peacock Theatre during lunchtimes, when people sat on the steps eating their sandwiches and loving every quick-fired line.

It was a one-act two-hander featuring Bergin as a writer, and here they are again in a one-act two-hander featuring Bergin as a writer. However, The Unexpected Man, written by Yasmina Reza (author of ART), is a play built on restraint. Bergin plays a novelist travelling by train to attend his daughter's wedding to an older man and mulling over his advancing age and the impending end of his career. Reeves plays the passenger opposite him, a fan reading his latest novel. It is a tantalising piece, with the dialogue largely internal, the interaction coming late. It is a piece in which the actors need an innate understanding of each other's movements. As soon as they heard the other was involved, they insist, all concerns disappeared.

"Well, the first week of rehearsal doesn't have to be about getting to know somebody and negotiating your way around them," says Reeves. "I mean, myself and Emmet don't really see each other, and it's been a good while since we worked, but because we worked in a two-hander before and toured together for four years in the Irish Theatre Company, we know each other in such a way that's almost like siblings, that you don't have to think too hard."

"If you've toured when you've been young," interjects Bergin, "you know the people who you like working with, that it's easy to work with . . ."

". . . And that sort of thing doesn't change," Reeves continues, "because it's a bond."

"We've been in fairly rough spots, in rough halls, when sets have been falling down," Bergin remembers, "and you're thinking, 'let's get going here'. I always use The Village Wooing as a bit of an ideal. It's really rare, you know. It's something people maybe don't realise; that you can spend a long time doing plays, and only now and again does it go right. It's very difficult to get a part that's right for you, or where you can play opposite a person who's on the same wavelength, so you're not singing from a different song. And you have to have a good production. And when all those elements work, that's really magic, and I remember Village Wooing as being something magic." "It was magic, yes," agrees Reeves.

They lament the passing of the Irish Theatre Company, especially now when the number of production companies is hardly enough to match the theatre venues. They do not miss the long touring so much. "I don't think my health would stand up to that," jokes Reeves. They are hardly intimidated by The Unexpected Man's brief tour to Cork, Waterford and Tallaght; the farthest afield the Pavilion Theatre has travelled as it asserts itself as a production house after a false start.

Conversation between the actors is broken up by bouts of laughter or nostalgia or slagging or a near riotous mix of all three. Playing the roles, though, will mean keeping those impulses on a leash.

"Obviously, it has to be choreographed," says Reeves, "so that you're not looking at each other at a time when one is saying, 'Oh, he's not looking at me'. So that if you do move, you're moving at a place where it's not distracting, or in a kind of fluid enough way."

She looks to her colleague. "Is that the right word?"

"Oh, don't ask me," Bergin replies.

The day we meet has been a good one, says Reeves, because it's been the first rehearsal in which they could feel what she calls "the sparks". Is it easier to work together now than then? "Do you know, I hadn't thought about it. It just feels the same," says Reeves.

"You just take up where you left off," adds Bergin.

They haven't really thought about how much each other may have changed as an actor. "I'm more interested," says Bergin, "in how much we've changed as people." How much? "Oh listen, lad," he bellows, "how much do you want for your tuppence?" And they descend into gales of laughter again.

The Unexpected Man runs in the Pavillion, Dún Laoghaire, February 26th - March 15th