HOW do you react when someone you love has a terminal diagnosis? Shock, grief, anger, silence, sympathy … humour?

Myra Bradley (Rachel Butcher) is diagnosed with bone cancer and told she has about six months to live. She wants to make the most of her time; she wants to choose where she will be buried; she wants to plan her funeral; she wants her husband and two daughters to be involved and to be able to go on without her. She wants a lot – and she wants them to be able to enjoy their time together … and to laugh.

Laura Wade’s play, Colder Than Here, about a family grappling with the impending loss of the person around whom all their lives revolve, asks a lot of the audience too. She wants us to laugh, perhaps to cry as well, but to try to understand things from Myra’s unique point of view, as well as sympathising with husband Alec (Mark Payne), stable reliable daughter Harriet (Angela Legg) and messed up daughter Jenna (Lesley Baker-Evans).

Some of Myra’s choices baffle her family. Why does she want insecure, self-obsessed Jenna to be in charge of finding the perfect green burial site? Why does she want a cheap cardboard coffin rather than something solid and well-made – and why on earth does she want it in the living room of the family home?

Colder Than Here, first staged at the Soho Theatre in February 2005, and first performed locally by Taboo at Sturminster Newton, is a play that will make you laugh and cry … and ask how you would cope if you were Myra, or her loving, hard-working husband, who finds it hard to speak about his (or anyone’s) feelings, or the sisters, whose edgy competitive relationship sometimes blinds them to the needs of others.

The play is set mainly in the Bradley’s living room, a basic mise en scene of sofa, chair, rug, cupboard and record player. The various green burial sites are shown in back-projections, with the actors on a piece of greensward with a bench. It is simple and effective, as is the lighting and the choice of music, particularly the poignant Brahms double concerto, hits the right emotional notes at every scene change – the Swan creative and production crew as always getting it just right.

The four actors embody the different family members with real empathy, capturing the intense emotions but giving their characters room to grow and change as we watch, following their different journeys, from Myra’s diagnosis to her impending death.

There isn’t a jarring note or a mis-step – director Liz Stallard and her cast demonstrate real emotional intelligence, metaphorically giving us permission to laugh but never pulling punches at the pain and grief which they all have to navigate.

Jenna puts it well when she quotes the cliche “Missing you already” line – she is already missing her mother, as Myra gradually slips into a world of pain and drugs. Myra too is aware of all that she will miss.

It is an evening of strange beauty, poignant, honest and, yes, often very funny.

FC