“A portrait of an England in love with its glorious past but unsure of its future,” writes Stephen Unwin, the director of this fine revival of David Storey’s Home, reinforcing his point by adding a tacky Union Jack to the table and chairs, which are all the decor the stage directions specify. And, yes, the conversation of the two main characters, each British and lost, does momentarily turn to antique heroes, old inventions and “an empire the like of which no one has ever seen”. But the elegaic feel goes deeper and farther than that.

“Home” is actually an enormous, impersonal asylum and David Calder’s Harry and Stephen Moore’s Jack are inmates. Harry may be prone to arson, Jack to little girls, and both have probably been rejected by wives and family, but we’re never quite sure because their get-together consists of evasion and truism punctuated by fantasy and sudden bouts of weeping. As they’re also rather blimpishly dressed and given to murmurs of “My word” and “By Jove”, it’s as if they’ve been invented by P. G. Wodehouse and Henry James: a collaboration that fuses the comic with the elusive.

But, as if to ensure that the cast list is more representative of our island culture, in come two women from early EastEnders or late Joe Orton: Lesley Joseph’s Kathleen, whose own mantra is “Cor blimey”, and Nichola McAuliffe’s almost equally raucous Marjorie. One has attempted suicide and beaten up the milkman who rescued her from the gas oven, the other is a serial depressive, but both, especially Kathleen, are obsessed with sex. In this microcosm the men are coy and timid, the women abrasive and aggressive. The arrival of Matthew Wilson as a lobotomised ex-wrestler who does little but hold tables over his head adds to the sense of confusion, loss, waste.

The acting is impeccable, with both men bearing comparison with Gielgud and Richardson, who created their roles in 1970. At times Calder stops both his burbling, empty chortling and blubbing, and his face becomes a dead man’s mask. He’s not only trailing a hapless past, he’s peering from a bleak present into a desolate future: poignant, painful, scary.

Box office: 01225 448844 in rep to Aug 1

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010