Much like the new (and excellent) Netflix drama His Three Daughters, British playwright Laura Wade’s comedy-drama depicts a fractured family brought together to care for a parent in their dying days.

Charlotte Friels and Hannah Waterman in Colder Than Here. Photo © Phil Erbacher

Myra (played here by Hannah Waterman) has cancer. She has a few weeks to live and while able, she wants to direct her own funeral. Her original choice – cremation – doesn’t seem so appealing now, and she’s on the look-out for a burial plot. Somewhere peaceful and scenic, preferably. Trees would be nice. She would also like an eco-friendly cardboard coffin, to be decorated by herself and family members. All quite simple.

But of course, the death of a parent, a life partner, is anything but simple. Myra’s husband Alec (Huw Higginson) affects a grufff sangfroid – he seems more preoccupied by a central heating problems than with his wife’s plight – but his distress is never far from the surface.

There is friction between Myra’s daughters, the peripatetic Jenna (Airlie Dodds) and sensible-seeming Harriet (Charlotte Friels), though, this being middle class, middle England, everything is conducted...