The Dog (Frinton)

There's an old theatre adage about never acting with children or with animals. I suspect that it takes a lot to upstage Richard Wilson, who plays Fraser – the central character in Jon Canter's new three-hander The Dog – but a gorgeous golden retriever called Darcey (Grace is her part in the play) manages it effortlessly.

One look at those dark brown eyes and immaculately gleaming coat, and you could feel the first night audience willing itself not to rush the stage and kidnap her. Frinton, of course, is a mannerly place, so attention also focused on the story.

This concerns a bickering couple, Apples (played by Jasmine Hyde) and her pop-artist manager husband Charlie (Patrick Marlowe). Their marriage is on the rocks and, in despair, she has insisted that Charlie accompanies her to a series of sessions with relationship counsellor Fraser.

We follow these meetings through a number of months and deliberately short scenes as Charlie's management of rock sensation The Moon crumbles like the proverbial blue cheese. Interleaved are Fraser's thoughts when he's alone, except for Grace, coping with imminent retirement and a mother who has senile dementia and is in a care-home.

It's a masterly performance by Wilson, with the pathos kept firmly in check as he faces personal loneliness while trying professionally to find out just what has gone wrong for Apples and Charlie and whether or not there will be a positive outcome.

Marlowe is very funny as louche Charlie, a man who would much rather be in touch with his mobile phone than with his inner man. Hyde balances him beautifully as the PA who managed to marry the boss but now finds that he still sees her as administration rather than a creative person in her own right.

There are a couple of very good one-liners. At one point Fraser, teetering on the edge of total exasperation, points out that "You're not here to hate one another. You can do that at home". Apples has an accurate description of her husband – when the conversation strays towards dogs – as a "poodle-rottweiler cross".

Edward Max directs with a set by Lucy Archbould. I wouldn't be surprised if this turned up at a theatre elsewhere than on the Essex coast in the near future.The presentation is by Clive Brill (for Brill Productions) and Matthew Townshend (mtp), producer of the anniversary season.

The Dog runs at the Frinton Summer Theatre until 23 August.