As we all know, there exists a magic ingredient that transports a routine romantic comedy above the realm of mush and turns it into something cherishable. It’s rare, unpredictable and usually indefinable but, whatever it is, this delightful piece from Rifco Arts has it in spades.

Writers Sonia Likhari and Harvey Virdi, like Alia Bano in last month’s similarly-themed Shades at the Royal Court, take as their starting point the fact that fewer British Asians now go down the traditional route of the arranged marriage.

Instead, they take their chances in the world of dating, both online and off, with its slew of frogs brightened by an occasional prince.

Four enormously likeable performers — Ankur Bahl, Pooja Ghai, Simon Rivers and Sharona Sassoon — play a host of singletons, all brought to us courtesy of the peppy, lonely hearts television programme The Cherry Mirza Show.

There are vox pops and snapshots but soon two major narrative strands begin to emerge. There’s Rajen (Rivers), a nervous young pharmacist besotted with his unknowing colleague Preeti (Sassoon), and middle-aged widow Shusheila (Ghai), who strikes up an unlikely friendship with gay postman Joggi (Bahl). All of this leads to a delightful pharmacy-set declaration of love that wouldn’t be out of place in a Richard Curtis film, and a Fred Astaire-style dance number as a prelude to a long-overdue blind date.

There are certainly rough-round-the-edges moments to both the writing and Pravesh Kumar’s direction, yet what is far more important is that this Soulmate is warm, appealing and has bundles of heart.

Its bouncy geniality is also deceptive, as Likhari and Virdi manage to reach the sort of emotional profundity — the desperate loneliness of the wait for “the one” — which superficially slicker shows wouldn’t begin to attain. Definitely worth making a date for.
Until 29 March (020 8534 0310, www.stratfordeast.com).