You're Never Too Old (tour – Bury St Edmunds)

Steve Wood has devised a wry comedy for two actors of a certain age. The setting is a park on the outskirts of Manchester. Ada, a neat – not to say prissy – woman sits down on a bench. Along wanders Tommy, bottle in hand with snatches of popular songs equally close to his lips.

But he's not quite the derelict that his grubby sneakers and well-worn jacket might suggest. For a start, Ada accepts his proximity, with a degree of daintiness it's true but without obvious disquiet. They've met before. It transpires that their relationship goes back a long, long way.

If Tommy is an accepting sort of bloke, Ada is his opposite. Out pours the story of her son, now living in London with a wife and daughter who she's never met. Until, that is, Philip send her a train ticket and a vague invitation to visit. Well, why not? Will the occasion ever arise again?

Ruth Madoc and Ian Lavender pace it all beautifully with the bitter-sweet mix of humour and the tears for time lost in a past perhaps beyond recall. Lavender has the easier role but Madoc wrests attention (and sympathy) back as our interest in their lives deepens as the sun sets over the park.

Director Danusia Iwaszko keeps it all properly straightforward and engagingly simple, all-but conducting the progress of this late afternoon in two people's autumnal lives as though it was a lyric suite, perhaps by Grieg. The uncredited set and Hannah Sophie Moore's lighting plot filer the mood, not decorate it.

Your're Never Too Old runs at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds until 27 September.