There was a time when David Storey's contribution to English literature was reckoned near equal to that of DH Lawrence.

As the son of a miner, deeply concerned with working-class values as well as issues of masculinity, the pedigree seemed absolutely right.

He began by producing a string of well-received novels and the screenplay of his book This Sporting Life. Then something happened to Storey the novelist.

Some psychological wound drove him from the isolation of prose writing into the energetic hotbed of English drama in the late Sixties and Seventies.

Quite how grateful contemporary theatregoers should be for that switch (and for the support he received from the Royal Court Theatre) is amply revealed by this revival of The Contractor.

It's a pretty astonishing piece of drama just in terms of the ambition of its stagecraft. But it's more than that, too. It's a fine meditation on the loyalties and fractures within three generations of a family and, most acutely, an examination of the very process of working life.

The theatrical coup of building, decorating and then dismantling a large marquee requires great concentration from actors who have to pace their lines against the timetable of construction.

Harold Hobson wrote of the "deep and inexplicable, or at least unexplained, sadness" in Storey's work. That is certainly there at the heart of this play and yet it is balanced by an awareness of the bizarre quirks of our existence which is entirely life-affirming.