The opening phrase of the programme for Ajar, a play by Suzanne Burlton, reads: At the heart of this tense piece of new writing is Silence. This must be a misprint. For Silence (note brooding capitalisation) did not lie at the centre of this play; it bookended its performance. When I arrived the five shamefaced members of the audience sat in glum, awkward noiselessness under the deadening flicker of the house lights. When it ended and the lights returned, no applause was heard.

The plot statically focussed on suburban housewife Lottie (Patricia Snell) whose suicide attempt is botched by the jangly entrance of makeup saleswoman Rachel (Sophie Peacock). Rachel then attempts, repeatedly over the course of one tortuous hour, to reassure Lottie that life with husband Michael (Jagveen Tyndall) is worth living.

Cue a hackneyed purge of vain indulgences uttered with the pretence of despair, outfitted in achingly teenage pseudo-nihilism. Patricia Snell was horribly miscast as the wholly unsympathetic Lottie, her American inflections making the character’s petulant, pimply rant all the more cringe-worthy, while her only moments of empathy still managed to come across as mockingly indignant. This was not helped by the stultifying effect of the linguistically joyless script, with lines reminiscent of those   used in porno movies to superficially contextualise the onset of some grotesque sexual payoff.

The writing was nothing compared to the bizarre direction, which mostly constituted a heinously wasteful use of the theatrical techniques on offer. Yet when it crudely attempted some dramatic effect it unfortunately failed to work. In the case of one dream sequence I was forced to stifle my laughter as a New Orleans-feel light design enfolded the Boris Karloff galumph of Tyndall, brandishing a blade while his fictional wife recounted this threatening yet inadvertently funny dream.

The one star goes to Sophie Peacock who managed to charge a semblance of vitality into this awfully stale production. The canorousness of her voice and the wonderfully wry arch of her eyebrow made me wonder throughout why she was wasting her time on such a misinformed project.

The reason why this play is so dislikeable is its offensive treatment of suicide. Depression, if dramatised, should be done so with some care, yet Ajar crafts a flippant disregard for facing up to the realities of psychological disruption, instead opting for bland, banal explanations that lead, somehow inevitably, lazy exit music (in this case The Sound of Silence).