WITH its spry wit, mellow mood and middle-class milieu, Laura Wade’s dialogue-driven new play could easily be seen as being better suited to an afternoon drama slot after The Archers. But if you shut your eyes, you’d miss the poignant moments of physical contact that infuse the gentle, melancholy humour of the play.

Without sentimentality or melodrama, Colder Than Here evokes the tension and heartache of a family facing up to the imminent death of a loved one. Myra Bradley (Margot Leicester) has only six months to live but she’s keeping busy by arranging a biodegradable, woodland burial for herself.

Without realising it, her efforts to make her departure as trouble-free as possible — backed up by an amusing PowerPoint presentation — have left her husband and two grown-up daughters with nothing to do but address their own problems.

Alec (Michael Pennington) is a chartered surveyor so self-contained that he can’t even listen to his beloved Brahms if other people are in the room. Jenna (Anna Madeley) is the needy daughter with constant boyfriend troubles and a bulimic past. Married Harriet (Georgia Mackenzie, pictured far right with Madeley) is her older, self-assured sister, slowly cracking under the strain of seeing her mother, the glue of the family, weakening while her cardboard coffin comes to dominate the living room.

Wade can make telling points through seemingly inconsequential details. With Myra no longer doing the shopping, buying the wrong cat food has led to the family pet doing a runner. It only takes Alec to say “I can’t really do problems” to sum up a life of emotional reticence and indecisiveness.

Naomi Wilkinson’s set, raised above real soil, is a curious mixture of house and parkland with trees sprouting by the sofa and record player. But a sense of growth is appropriate as the play shows how Alec and Myra start to bridge the gap in a marriage of separate beds, and Jenna matures into what one suspects will be the emotional rock of the family.

The performances are beautifully pitched in Abigail Morris’s production. Leicester is a frail but still wilful presence, Mackenzie freezes before our eyes and Madeley’s clenched body language loosens up as she sorts her life out. Pennington makes a phone call to get the long-broken boiler fixed a heartbreaking monologue as Alex’s suppressed pain seeps into his frustration.

This is low-key drama that some may feel is dramatically underwhelming, with no profound insights. But it’s still a deft exploration of family dynamics — and without a single shouting match. With another play opening this month at the Royal Court, Wade is clearly a playwright on the rise.

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