KATIE Posner briefly contemplated Caryl Churchill’s Far Away when Damian Cruden asked her to pick a play to direct in the York Theatre Royal ensemble season, but that thought soon went further away.

Instead, Katie, the associate director of Pilot Theatre, suggested the work she really wanted to do: the northern premiere of Parlour Song by Jez Butterworth, a black comedy set behind closed doors on a typical suburban street, from the writer of Jerusalem.

“You’ve lived for years in the one house. Same doors, same windows, same patches of damp on your ‘broken leather’ artex ceiling,” she says, introducing Butterworhh’s three-hander.

“Then one day, while flicking through the Ikea catalogue and wondering when you should next go somewhere ‘on for your ‘olidays’, you see a door that you have never noticed. Would you open it? Why have you never seen it before? Has someone stolen in during the night and moved your tasteful family portrait to install a new portal to who knows where?”

In Parlour Song, after 11 years of marriage to Joy, Ned hasn’t slept a wink in months but still things keep going missing from his house. Could friendly, helpful neighbour Dale be responsible or has he been pinching something, someone, else?

Deceit, paranoia and murderous thoughts come to the surface in a play that asks: can you ever trust what’s on the surface and do you ever really know your neighbours?

“This play is about something we may all experience. Reaching a point in your life and wondering what you have become and what you might have been. What made you happy before leaves a bad taste in the mouth and that special marriage that was once so sacred has turned sour,” says Katie.

“In this suburban nightmare each character is desperate for change and yet is terrified to do anything about it in a rainless summer filled with loss, loathing, lemons and the story of the ‘blues’.”

Katie chose to chose to direct Parlour Song because the secret world of net curtain-twitching and neighbourhood whispers was instantly recognisable to her, having been brought up in St Albans.

“I wanted to explore the rich metaphorical language which I found so enticing. Jez Butterworth has found the voice of the often silent suburbs that I so I wanted to hear,” she says. “Ned, Joy and Dale are creations rich in depth and so ripe they are in danger of going rotten.”

Directing a play where a marriage has gone so wrong is something of a contrast with Katie Posner’s own circumstances: only last month she wed actor Michael Lambourne.

“That’s what Jez said to me! ‘How is it for you, directing this so soon after getting married?’. But I can draw on the experiences of a previous eight-year relationship,” she says.

Parlour Song runs in The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until July 23. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk