It’s a slowburner, Barney Norris’ new play While We’re Here, one that needs processing and mulling over long after the curtain falls at the North Wall, as its title suggests.

This is about loneliness, the killing of dreams, the realities of life, how our past shapes and forms us, last chances, safety, regret and rejection. It’s about fear; fear of the unknown, fear of getting hurt, fear of anything new and that innate English quality – the stiff upper lip – where appearances are more important than anything.

Two old flames Eddie and Carol bump into each other, as played by Tessa Peake-Jones (of Only Fools and Horses and Grantchester fame) and Andrew French.

Carol is secure. She has her own house with slatted blinds in Havant and works for the council, being promoted over the years to lead the department. She has a daughter who has left home, and her world has become very small. She thinks she’s happy but her loneliness is palpable, her boundaries suffocating her slowly but surely. She is instantly recognisable.

Eddie has gone the other way, spurning all trappings for a life free of possessions but rich in experience. He has fallen on hard times and finds himself back in Havant with nothing, where Carol offers him her sofa and a sanctuary of sorts.

The play unfolds during their subsequent evenings, as we discover how their lives have panned out, an achingly poignant and piercing look at suburbia and the webs we weave.

Its also achingly English – as we slowly realise that both Carol and Eddie are irredeemably battered by their respective pasts and cannot and will not heal. “I’m all walled in” as Carol puts it. The frustration for the audience is that their salvation can only come through each other.

Alan Ayckbourn-esque, this is instantly relatable and thought provoking stuff, Barney Norris’ incredible insight into the elder generation impressive for one so young. On until tonight. thenorthwall.com

Katherine MacAlister 5/5