This is set in a rundown backyard in 1940s and 50s Trinidad, where prostitutes ply their trade under the accusing eye of respectable families; where jobs are few and far between and where Calypso music, wit and raw sexual energy abound.

It’s a place where the young dream of escape, and where the old look back to shattered expectations and thwarted ambition. It’s not an easy place, and playwright Errol John’s tragicomedy offers no easy answers.

The story centres on Ephraim (Okezie Morro), a trolley bus driver who plans to escape to a better life in Liverpool, despite his girlfriend Rosa (Alisha Bailey)’s pregnancy. His neighbour Sophia, played by Martina Laird, tries to persuade him to face up to his responsibilities and stay.

Laird, best known as Comfort Jones in the BBC’s drama Casualty, is perfect as the respectable, if truculent, wife.

Sophia’s husband Charlie (Jude Akuwudike) is a hopeless dreamer whose cricketing talent has come to very little. He had been set to play at an international level, but his ambitions were thwarted when he refused to accept that white cricketers on tour stayed in the best hotels while black cricketers were relegated to crummy, third class accommodation. His moral stance led to him being dropped from the team.

Their daughter Esther is also bright and with huge potential, but money troubles mean it looks like Esther’s talent will, like her dad’s, go to waste. The energetic 12-year-old is played by Tahirah Sharif, a semi-regular in Casualty who brings a huge amount of bounce to the role.

In the middle of this is Mavis, a lady-of-the-night beautifully played by Bethan Mary-James, who plies her trade with wisdom and wit and brings a rich comic side to the play.

It is a measure of the moral complexities offered that, at the end, I found myself not being at all sure whether I wanted Ephraim to stay or to go. Either way, the outcome would not be good. The production continues until Saturday.