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 experiments on customers in the queue), Jimmy strikes up a conversation. An awkward first date follows – in a cafe where everything is 50p – and a glimmer of future romance becomes apparent.

The course of this true love doesn’t run smoothly, however. After being sacked from the doughnut shop and replaced by an automatic coin basket, Jimmy wakes up to find that his hands have become invisible. He can still feel them, still use them, but can’t see them. He takes to wearing gloves to interviews at the Job Centre but there’s nothing he can do about it.

Bit by bit, Jimmy starts to disappear. Soon he’s on his way to becoming Newport’s very own Invisible Man.

Jane Angharad in How My Light is Spent. Photo © Robert Catto

Harris’ play was originally a two-hander with the actors voicing its plethora of colourful Newport characters. This staging by Sydney indie stalwarts Secret House gives us a more fully populated world, with another three actors – Renée Billing, Pita Lolohea and Kira McLennan – giving physical shape as well as voice to people including Jimmy’s devoutly religious mother, a lovelorn topiary enthusiast and Jimmy’s young daughter, among others.

Harris lends a sympathetic but unsentimental ear to all in a play that captures individual quirks without judgement or stooping to ridicule.

Kira McLennan, Renée Billing and James Smithers in How My Light is Spent. Photo © Robert Catto

In two notably tender performances, Smithers (sporting a classic small-town pudding bowl haircut) and Angharad – whose Welsh accent is an excellent guide for everyone else – anchor the story just about perfectly.

Smithers has also designed the set, with clever ‘infinity’ mirrors making this small traverse stage feel enormous. Lighting (Clare Sheridan) and sound/music (Anthony MacDermott) contribute strongly.

Just over an hour long, it’s a charming – indeed heartwarming – encounter. Take a first date along and you’ll come out holding hands.

How My Light is Spent plays at KXT on Broadway, Sydney until 26 September.