I find some days contain enough novelty and adventure to generate several diary entries, while others are wastelands of duty, chores, reading and writing (or trying to write) and quiet nights in. It’s not so much that nothing happened on these duller dates, more that nothing new or particularly noteworthy happened.

If you’re going to see “A Matter Of Life And Death” and would rather not know about the controversial ending, best avoid this entry. The ending has been debated in corners of the national press, though, and I would say the point of the production is the whole show: it’s not a murder mystery. I knew about the ending in advance myself, and it was still pretty shocking.

So, it’s the previous Saturday, and I’m at the National Theatre with Mum to see the stage production of A Matter Of Life And Death, based on the 1940s film by Powell and Pressburger. It has had mixed reviews, not least because of its choice of endings, where the David Niven character lives or dies on the toss of a coin. What’s more, the coin in question is handed to a member of the audience to do the honours. It’s said that some audience members have fibbed about the result in order to save the hero’s life. Mum and I agree that if the coin were handed to us, we’d have to refuse and ask the next nearest person to oblige.

At this Saturday matinee, the coin comes up heads, and the Niven character lives. But though the audience sighs in relief, the closing song, presumably in place for both endings, is still pretty sombre and bleak. Either ending is a sad one, because of the point it raises: war is random and death is unfair.

This is something of a departure from the classic film’s conclusion of love winning against the celestial order. It’s a very 2007 interpretation by director Emma Rice, who blends in post-Dresden awareness, and indeed post-Iraq awareness. She also nods to her own personal story concerning memories of her bell ringing grandfather, who survived the War but was a witness to many who died. The show features much otherworldly bell ringing, and only by reading Ms Rice’s poignant programme notes does one truly appreciate this detail.

Also in the programme are real letters home from airmen, including one to be handed to their parents in the event of death. It’s from the base at RAF Wattisham in Suffolk, with a Bildeston phone number. Bildeston is the village I grew up in.

Much as the 1940s film is a masterpiece, I have always thought that parts of the trial sequence are very of its time and hold up the otherwise timeless nature of the story. Mr Niven’s prosecuting counsel is the first American soldier to be killed by a British bullet, and there follows a lengthy musing on very 1940s attitudes held by the UK and US towards each other.

In Ms Rice’s stage remix, the prosecution is conducted by no less than William Shakespeare, who calls witnesses from the dead mothers of Dresden and Coventry, all dressed identically. The Niven character is the pilot of a Lancaster Bomber with over sixty ‘ops’ to his name. The show thus argues that his unfair death breaking a loving couple apart is no different to the umpteen similarly dividing deaths he’s had a hand in himself. And thus to the climactic coin-tossing over his own life.

It’s certainly thought-provoking, and though Mum and I thoroughly enjoyed the show, I can understand why many fans of the film, or indeed just people who disagree with this concluding sentiment, aren’t entirely happy with it.

I would say it’s better not to judge the production as an adaptation of the film, more as an idiosyncratic and personal spectacle that takes the Niven movie as a departure point for its own ideas. Of which there are plenty.

It’s not a dull couple of hours: the company are the very physically-inclined Knee High group from Cornwall, who specialise in a more physical and visual approach to drama. The star of the show is the staging itself, the actors merely its servants. Nurses on bicycles (but unlike what we saw later on Waterloo Bridge, they’re fully clothed), pedalling upside down on hospital beds, lots of ropes and climbing about on swinging platforms, lots of original songs (even a rap-style number at one point) lots of precision choreography and inspired costume and set design, and one favourite moment of mine where pocket torches shoot up out of the players’ hands to become stars in the night sky. Imaginative ensemble playing all round.

The opening scene where the Niven hero falls in love over the radio with a female base operator is still incredibly powerful and moving, and is pretty much a straight lift from the film, though the heroine here is English, not American. But with all the music and rope climbing and similar goings-on, there’s times when the story can’t help but take a back seat to the spectacle.

Still, when you’re an actor trying to play out an emotional scene while negotiating a series of hospital beds suspended some distance above the stage, that’s only to be expected. At such moments, the audience are more concerned that the players aren’t going to have their limbs broken, let alone their hearts broken.

Actually, I wonder how the Knee High Company wish each other good luck before a show? It can’t possibly be “break a leg”.