The trouble with reunion plays or films, whether they involve college graduates or anyone else, is that they tend to be predictable. There will be nostalgia, botched attempts to recreate the old days, recognition that time has changed people, quarrels, reconciliations, but (remembering a key example of the genre) a “Big Chill” in the air. And so it proves with Andrew Upton’s Riflemind, which brings John Hannah and the excellent Paul Hilton to the West End and several other performers from Sydney, where Philip Seymour Hoffman’s production originated.

This time, the reunion is of the members of a once-famous band called, yes, Riflemind. With a comeback and possibly a world tour in mind, they gather in the country house to which Hannah’s John, its lead guitarist, has retreated. And, thanks to Upton and Hoffman’s joint skills, both the dialogue and the atmosphere are as real as could be: which is a mixed blessing, since you sometimes feel that you’re eavesdropping on distant cousins of Led Zeppelin or the Police, and sometimes that clarity is being sacrificed to rock-star burble, overlapping dialogue and other such quirks of authenticity.

Moreover, the first act seems a bit repetitive and, apart from the moment when the band’s manager has comically hasty sex with a musician’s wife, pretty eventless. There were times when I wished that Hannah would revert to being his TV character, Ian Rankin’s Rebus, and buzz off to Edinburgh to arrest the serial killers who gather regularly in Waverley Station. But the second act hots up, with arguments about money, talent and other divisive matters getting torrid and even ugly.

John insults just about everyone, especially Hilton’s Phil, who is belatedly revealed to be his alienated brother. Drugs make a vestigial appearance. Feelings ebb and flow, intensify and evaporate, as if they fundamentally don’t matter, which maybe they don’t. And you realise why Hannah is so surly. He’s been kept off the bottle by his partner, Susan Prior’s Lynn, and, since she now proceeds to go on a three-day bender, she’s as much an alcoholic as him. Also, he wants and doesn’t want to indulge his still stronger addiction to making music to screeching crowds. He’s in conflict, insecure, troubled – and, at times, quite interesting.

But not interesting enough. The cast is immaculate. You won’t see a half-stoned scene better played than by Hilton or many more credible exemplars of good-natured confusion than Steve Rodgers’s Moon, the group’s needy, near-bankrupt drummer. Yet the emotional stakes never seem as high as effective drama demands. Let’s forget the second-rate music we hear occasionally. Let’s suppose that this band was once a blend of Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. It’s still hard to care about their individual or collective fates.

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