At first you feel that you are observing the sort of breakfast that you might find in every other upmarket house in Surrey, Sussex or Buckinghamshire. Simon Russell Beale's Edward (pictured, below) grumbles like some superannuated colonel over his Telegraph. Clare Higgins's Flora humours him, not seeeming to mind when he attacks her for saying that the wasp he has trapped in the marmalade jar might have “bitten” rather than “stung” them. That's Godalming, Cuckfield or Marlow for you.

In Harold Pinter's plays such minutiae can signal trouble; and in A Slight Ache, minor marital tension duly escalates into serious marital discord. The catalyst is the arrival in the house of the figure who has been standing at the couple's back gate, forlornly holding a tray of matches. In his grubby overcoat and grey head-covering this unnamed man looks deeply weird: a blend of friar, Beckett tramp and the Man in the Iron Mask. He says nothing, which means that Edward and Flora can each project their suppressed feelings on to him.

A Slight Ache dates from 1959 and was originally a one-hour radio play, with David Baron - which was Pinter's stage name - jokily billed as performing the silent matchseller. But it transposes effectively to the stage and more than justifies the occcasional 6pm performances it is now getting. A full production and a pairing with Pinter's equally short Landscape will follow in the autumn. That's welcome - but the play's importance is also to encourage the rediscovery of other one-acters and their staging as curtain raisers.

Does one need a Pinter codebook to con a superficially difficult play? That might help, but imagination should be enough. Why does Edward bluster so patronisingly at this stooped, pathetic figure? Because, like many Pinter men, he's insecure, controlling and paranoid. Why does Flora offer him succour that seems part maternal, part sexual? Because, like many Pinter women, she has needs that are not being satisfied. Why does Edward land up on his back: blind, half-mad, burbling at the tray of matches put on his stomach by his wife?

Let me just say that A Slight Ache demonstrates that Pinter's world is always dangerous. At the start of the day you may be fine, apart from having a “slight ache” in your eyes, and at the end even more helpless than Kafka's human dung-beetle. Nice? no. Strange and striking? Absolutely.

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