Alan Bennett resents his work sometimes being dismissed as “cosy” with its darkness and seriousness lost among his trademark wit.

With child leukaemia, mental health problems, the indignity of ageing, repressed homosexuality and casual racism featuring in two plus hours of three monologues, there’s no shortage of serious issues for the audience to leave pondering.

Of course with Bennett you’re never far away from roar-inducing wordplay, northern bathos and “you-can’t-say-that-mother” humour.

The play is chock-full of memorable lines, personal faves include an obsessive cleaner who “could do with trees if it wasn’t for the leaves” and a justification for an elderly mother using the disabled toilets as “she’s not actually disabled, her memory’s bad”.

But all three performers, Siobhan Redmond, Karl Theobald and Stephanie Cole, manage to slowly reveal the frailties and loneliness of the characters through from first instance when they may seem grotesques or two-dimensional types.

Very occasionally, Redmond and Theobald fall into the trap of sounding like Bennett-impersonators, such is the distinctive voice of the playwright, but this is a minor quibble.

Congratulations must also go to the production team for their “cosy” sets, chintzy homes with walls stretching to a vanishing point mark the limits of the character’s lives to their bedroom or living room.

Serious? You betcha but with plenty of laughs along the way.

Five stars