Theatre / The Dear Departed. At Mill Theatre, Fyshwick, until March 28. Reviewed by ALANNA MACLEAN.

Stanley Houghton’s The Dear Departed is one of those domestically sharp plays that come out of the early 20th century, in this case the Manchester School of dramatists.

He would go on to write the longer and deeper Hindle Wakes, but it’s got a housebound humour that is very well caught in this radio drama style presentation under Lexi Sekuless’ deft direction.

Upstairs the patriarch lies dead. Downstairs daughter Amelia (Andrea Close) has to deal with the arrival of her sister Elizabeth (Helen McFarlane) and some tussles about who’s going to inherit what bit of furniture. It’s pretty clear the care of the father has been an issue and that the sisters have been at odds. Sorting out any inheritance is going to be difficult.

Has the old boy paid up the insurance? Amelia’s husband Henry (Richard Manning) and Elizabeth’s husband Ben (Timmy Sekuless) don’t make the decisions but are useful for things like furniture moving and terse comments and in Ben’s case a driving desire for a particular type of biscuit.

Young Victoria Slater played by Sarah Hartley (but Aleksis Andreitchenko, March 27-28) specialises in blunt observations and what sounds like teenage humour, early 20th century style.

Graeme Rhodes holds this short play together by an occasional good humoured narration. To reveal more would be to give away what happens.

The cast deftly do the sound effects and the whole is aided, abetted and recorded by ArtSound FM. Those of us old enough to remember the golden days of radio drama can sit there happy reliving them.