THE stone columns look imperious. The lawn is expansive. The white garden furniture, a table and two chairs, evokes golden summer days.

Look again. The wall is but a vestige of a bygone lordship. The lawn is parched. The metalwork on the table and chairs is rusting.

Appearances can be deceptive - even to Wakefield-born playwright David Storey, who only "discovered" the real location of Home half way through writing his 1970 play.

On first encounter, Harry (David Calder) and Jack (Christopher Godwin) are strolling gents, bonded in reflective friendship as they while away the day on the garden terrace until lunch, watching clouds and familiar faces scud by.

Usually Storey's men are at work in his plays, but here Harry and Jack would appear to be in the halcyon daze of retirement, albeit still carrying the deportment of their working past. Calder's Harry, in sports jacket, cardigan and crumpled hat, could pass for a benign schoolmaster; Godwin's tall and upright Jack, as slim as his cane, has the military air of fastidious politeness. As with the lawn and chairs, they have seen better times; all that is left is routine.

Their conversation is elliptical, like hamsters forever climbing back on their wheel. Enter Marjorie (Sandra Voe) and limping Kathleen (Geraldine James) to shatter their rhythmic patter. Dowdy Marjorie is the bossy one, forever telling Kathleen to cover up her legs, mutton still trying to be lamb in her strappy shoes. The women's conversation is raucous, saucy. Suddenly, Kathleen talks of her shoe laces being taken away for her safety, and the realisation dawns that this institution may not be a faded English hotel.

Storey has said he cannot really say what the theme of Home is. Certainly, there is a dying of the Empire flame, and certainly, too, there is role reversal. The women are stronger, open. The men cry; they have lost their sense of worth, living out a facade that can no longer fool even themselves. (A third man, David Hinton's one-time wrestler Alfred, keeps lifting the table and chairs to affirm his strength.)

Old England crumbles like the best Wensleydale cheese in Sean Holmes's superb, haunting production for the Oxford Stage Company, theatre makers of distinction.

Home, Oxford Stage Company, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, Oct 30. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 12:09 Friday, October 29, 2004