We start with a gorgeous sequence between old hands Jack and Harry, bantering and chatting about the old days in a most fragmented way, lamenting the Britain of the past and delivering their old patter routines to while away the hours as if two old friends had just met up. But their reverie is shattered by the arrival of Kathleen and Marjorie as we soon realise that we’re actually in the grounds of a mental asylum, something confirmed by the final addition, the genuinely disturbed, and much younger, Alfred.
Thus the seeming pointlessness of the earlier chatter gains an almost unbearable poignancy and we come to understand that none of them have the chance of release, and that the things that they mourn are not just lost to them because of the past, but also in the present too. Britain has left them behind as we have abandoned so many of our old folk, and if Storey’s point about the decline of the nation feels a little stretched, it is hard to ignore in the quiet intensity of this production.