We have come to regard Alan Ayckbourn as the king of living-room drama. Here, though, we’re the ones on saggy sofas and lived-in armchairs, as Laurie Sansom stages this 2004 play around us. It makes a scrappy piece slightly scrappier. The playwright leaves suburbia to follow six Londoners mired in habit and congealed banter. Most interesting is maggot-pallid Lucy Briers, as a miserable administrator with a dark side. God and the devil are fighting it out within her, with tactical use of a PVC catsuit. Impressive, too, is Kim Wall’s impeccable hotel barman, getting the Baileys bored off him at work, but clinging to meagre home comforts. It’s not a dark play, exactly, but it is a grey one. Ayckbourn, celebrating his 70th birthday this year, is British theatre’s Eeyore, exploring human behaviour on a continuum between shame and disappointment. Typical of this is a conversation between exes, the woman explaining that her heart used to lift when they met. “But coming here to see you today,” she continues, “it sort of . . . sank.” Ayckbourn is a master of that sinking feeling.

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