WITHOUT wanting to relate everything back to Brexit almost two months after the referendum, the contemporary resonance of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House is difficult to ignore.

The only work Shaw produced during the First World War, the play is set within a ship-shaped house that hosts a representative cross-section of British society; capitalists, politicians, upper classes, working classes and so on.

The world outside the house is in absolute disorder amid the destruction of war, and the inhabitants within exist in a bubble, says artistic director Nicholas Quirke. “They’re not really aware of the political things going on outside.”

Shaw was focusing on war and asking how society allows it to happen. The play is very much about Britain’s particular role in this chaos in Europe.”

Ninety-seven years after the publication of Heartbreak House, Britain is again on the edge of Europe looking in (or happy to be out, depending on your viewpoint).

Quirke, director and co-founder of the Droll and Folly theatre company who formed last year, says he had wanted to stage the play for a while, but the EU referendum “amplified the reason and the need to do it”. He sees that Heartbreak House’s thematic content is particularly relevant in Brighton.

“It is pertinent in terms of the vote to leave Europe despite this city very much wanting to remain, mostly, and then being astounded that the rest of the country seemed to feel completely different. That kind of feeling is what Shaw was trying to explore.”

Despite the alienation of the house’s members, and the looming threat of the war’s carnage, Quirke is keen to stress that Heartbreak House is, in fact, a comedy. “It might not sound like it, but Shaw’s humour is very sharp.”

Furthermore, Droll and Folly’s version of the play presents at least a vague feeling of positivity at its end.

“There are no answers, but the characters are left feeling that maybe there is something exciting that could come out of all this. This chaos, destruction, can be rebuilt upon.

“No matter what is happening, there is a positive future, and perhaps we can change the world for the better. That’s the sense at the end of the play.”

Amid the production’s allegorical bent, there is plenty of room for vivid, colourful characters. The so-called ‘captain’ Shotover is particularly intriguing; he is an old mariner who has sailed the world, and also an inventor, which is how he makes money. Quirke reveals that there is a devastating impact to such apparently maverick behaviour, though.

“The captain makes these arms to sell to the armouries, which are eventually going to be killing large swathes of young men across Europe.”

Shotover also strives to achieve the “seven degrees of concentration” throughout the play, but nobody knows what that entails, exactly. The elusiveness of truth is recurrent as Heartbreak House progresses. “Bit by bit throughout the play, the characters are revealed to be not what we think they are.”

“There is a moving tale behind the foundation of the Brighton Open Air Theatre,” Quirke explains. “It was the dying vision of Adrian Bunting, a big player in the local theatre scene who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2013.

“His dream was to see an open air theatre in Brighton. He got some close friends together and said he had some money saved up to get the plans off the ground. Adrian died, and these four close friends became trustees of this money as well as raising more. It was built last year. A real people’s project, a fantastic story.”

Heartbreak House, Brighton Open Air Theatre, Dyke Road, Hove, Tuesday, August 16, to Sunday, August 21, 7pm, £14, 07410 534554