Are we the poltergeists of the future? What kind of dysfunctional, smashed up, crazy and chaotic world are we leaving for our children? And if we don’t have children, are we off the hook? In Lucy Kirkwood’s 2016 play these are the big questions which confront Little Old Us. She poses uncomfortable truths by placing the epic into small human scale. That of course is what theatre can do supremely well. Small is not always beautiful but boy can it pack a punch!

We are in a sparsely furnished cottage with a kitchen full of well-past-sell-by-date furniture. We are on the east coast – somewhere close to Sizewell though precise geography is never revealed, We are in the company of just three characters each in their mid 60s. Hazel, a thoroughly capable, middle class yoga-loving, radio4-listening mother of four; Robin, a booze-loving buccaneer who in retirement has taken to tending cattle. In true Ibsen style their (not so) cosy world is disrupted by the arrival of a third party: Rose, a flighty flirty old flame and former colleague. Forty years before all three were work colleagues working on nuclear power plants. Hazel is taken aback by this ghost from the past. Radioactive recollections are in the air. There is dangerous fallout from a long-ago fling involving the morally dubious Robin and Rose.

Against a bickering backdrop there is real tragedy. The cottage sits just beyond the exclusion zone of an East Anglian Fukushima. Power is intermittent, food in short supply, Hazel’s cupboards are nearly bare. There are cream crackers and lettuce for lunch. Why then has Rose returned after 38 years? Why come to this danger zone of nuclear and family melt down?

This fine play is packed full of moral and social dilemmas, teasing mysteries, and enough talking points to keep you busy in the post-play pub for hours (I can recommend the theatre bar now offering gourmet food or the Dog and Partridge just over the road from the Theatre Royal). The cast is a trio of delight. Gillian Bevan as the edgy and troubled Hazel, Michael Higgs perfect as the ageing Lothario Robin and the ‘star draw’ Imogen Stubbs playing Rose, the pensioner who takes pills to subdue her libido. Kirkwood’s lines are often very funny in a dark Chekhovian way and there are moments bordering on farce (including a badly leaking toilet). The characters are richly drawn and the main reveal, the reason for Rose’s coming, when it comes, eventually, is shattering. The in-house production directed by Owen Calvert-Lyons is very deftly done – an nice easy pace which builds into gripping drama.

Third in the Guardian’s ‘Top 50 Plays of the Century’, a trip to the lovely theatre in Bury is a must. Go, see the play, talk about it afterwards, and tell the children! Maybe after our time we can be angels of truth not poltergeists of ruin.

https://theatreroyal.org/shows/the-children/

The show runs until 25 March.