After touring the critically acclaimed Mother around the nation for a decade, on and off, Noni Hazlehurst, writer Daniel Keene and director Matt Scholten return with another powerful one-hander.

This world premiere season of The Lark is a theatrical gift, with Hazlehurst effortlessly spinning out Keene’s melancholy yet frequently funny yarn. On a sparse, static set, she brings his retired publican Rose Grey to life for 70 extraordinary minutes.

The Lark is the name of the pub Rose visits one last time before it’s demolished. As she wanders down memory lane, we gradually learn that this working-class watering hole was Rose’s world for most of her life.

It was where she was born, where her dad, the former owner, faded away, and day in, day out, where she served a motley crew of characters who came because it wasn’t “home or the hereafter”.

Noni Hazlehurst in The Lark. Photo © Cameron Grant, Parenthesy

Keene’s script is full of memorable lines, both poetic and amusing. Many a turn of phrase – such as “hangin’ on to the tit of life” – recalls an Australian manner of speaking from generations past, yet it always sounds fresh and authentic.

His anecdotes about The Lark’s patrons also have a ring of truth despite or perhaps because of their oddity. Perhaps Keene found inspiration at real inner-city Melbourne dive bars in decline, where the regulars dwindle over time in neighbourhoods transformed by gentrification.

His brilliantly crafted tale is, above all, Rose’s story. It’s one anchored, indeed weighed down by absence, slow erasure and an inability to move on, told in this solitary character’s matter-of-fact way. The gentle twist at the end is like a bittersweet sigh.

Noni Hazlehurst in The Lark. Photo © Cameron Grant, Parenthesy

Hazlehurst delivers a masterclass in understated acting as she reveals a lifetime of regret bottled up inside the world-weary Rose. She makes each of Keene’s words matter with small shifts in tone and facial expression, and a natural rhythm of speech.

The minimal physicality of Hazlehurst’s performance is all the more remarkable given she has little more than those words to work with. Occasionally leaning on a walking stick, she slowly steps between the wooden bar, a dilapidated table and chair, and the middle of the floor of Emily Barrie’s set.

Glass shelves hanging askew from the back bar’s dusty wall of mirror symbolise The Lark’s demise, while the frumpy, faded layers of Rose’s costume, also designed by Barrie, speak of this older woman’s practicality and narrow existence.

Richard Vabre’s lighting subtly changes with the story’s mood and beautifully suggests natural effects such as moonlight and late-afternoon sunlight shining through the pub’s coloured glass.

Darius Kedros’s sound design is effective because it’s restrained. The world outside The Lark occasionally creeps in with barely perceptible noises such as a bird twittering or a tram’s bell, while a few times toward the play’s end, a strained sustained note suggests something’s amiss.

Keene quotes Aristotle in the program notes: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” That’s very much the case with The Lark. A short play about one stunted life, revealed by a lone actor and minimal design, it is somehow utterly compelling.

The Lark plays the Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, until 28 September.

It then plays the Cremorne Theatre, QPAC, Brisbane 15–26 October.