The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas implored us to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”. In this play by his latter-day countryman Alan Harris, the dying of the light takes a more fatalistic turn.

“Are we like candles?” muses his lead character Jimmy (played here by James Smithers) at one point. “Do we have a certain amount of light, and when that’s gone, we’re gone?”

James Smithers in How My Light is Spent. Photo © Robert Catto

Divorced, in his mid-thirties and now living with his mum (again) in Newport, north-east of Cardiff, Jimmy leads an unexceptional life. The pleasures he gets from his casual job – manning the drive-thru window of a takeaway doughnut shop – help to pull him through. So do his regular calls to a phone sex line while his mother is out at Salvation Army meetings.

His preferred relationship is with ‘Kitty’ (Jane Angharad) and over several exchanges (there’s ample time for talk after the business part of the deal is done), Jimmy fancies he’s formed something of a relationship with her.

After recognising her voice at the doughnut shop one day (she likes to conduct altruistic...