At the top of the show the scene is set with a discordant dance version of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, the first few bars of which instantly tell an audience that the knot has been tied. Or in this case, is about to be tied. Charlotte, wearing a stunningly ugly vintage wedding-dress with buttons they could serve the wedding cake on, dashes in to a vestry to redo her make-up and is confronted by her soon to be step-daughter, El (who seems to be hinting she’s a son, but never gets there).

El is disgusted that her soon to be step-mother is the same age as her, and Charlotte covers up a shrewd practicality with an erratic, chirpy, obliviousness.

Charlotte (Charly Clive) gets all the best lines. She’s consistently funny, even when she’s delivering a huge monologue about biological evolution (a woman behind me hissed ‘Shut up’, but was laughing a line later, that’s how good Clive is at getting laughs out of material that could have bogged down another performer). El (played by Ellen Robertson, who is also the playwright) is funny in a quieter, more mournful way. As well as having trouble accepting that her ‘puritan’ widower father is marrying a much younger women, her own life has imploded after her girlfriend left her and her father stopped paying her rent.

In the tradition of Jane Austen, this marriage is more about money and security than romance. El’s objections and Charlotte’s justifications are predicated on class. Charlotte has had to work and scrimp; El has been cushioned by her father’s wealth. A lot of emphasis is placed on their age, 32, which they think is very young, as if not being able to afford a house means you can’t be grown up, which is true, in a way. They both depend on the father (who never appears). He’s described as a ‘Boomer’ although he’s in his early 60s, which would make him Gen X, unless Boomer just means old these days.

The ‘jitters’ of the title could refer to an entire generation facing middle-age with their main asset (if they have an asset) being their elderly parents, what happens to them if those parents spend all their money? Marry again and have a young family? Disinherit them?

The questions raised might be serious, and the actors (directed by Emily Burns) barely move, but the show skips along as lightly as a Whitehall farce.

Jitters has finished its run