The seductive slow-burn that American playwright Annie Baker employs in her hyper-naturalistic dramas has been compared to Chekhov. Not a great deal seems to happen on the surface, but beneath the sporadic, ambling conversations, full of silences and slightly awkward moments, she subtly conveys more and more about the characters. Very often it’s loneliness that she is revealing, along with jealousy and a deep-seated need for love.

Outhouse Theatre Co, an independent Sydney company, has already enjoyed considerable success with productions of two of her plays, both directed by Craig Baldwin: The Aliens, about three social misfits, set in the grungy backyard of a café in small-town Vermont, and The Flick, an ineffably tender play (which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2014) about three people working in a small, run-down cinema in Massachusetts.

Now Outhouse presents Baker’s 2015 play John, also directed by Baldwin, which has many of the same qualities as The Aliens and The Flick, but which also feels somewhat different given its rather gothic sense of mystery.

Maggie Blinco, Belinda Giblin and Shuang Hu. Photograph © Clare Hawley

The moment the red velvet curtain opens, we are intrigued. Designed in...