We are in a small town near Swansea at the end of the second world war. Five young women in floral print dresses and seamed stockings - all orphaned sisters - are tapping their toes to the sound of The Victory Roll. One of them, Lillian, is about to fall in love.
This wartime romance, by the You Need Me company, is full of expectation and regret. Lillian meets a French fighter pilot called Raymond at a dance, and soon the pair are cuddling up to each other at the cinema, their courtship conducted with the help of an English phrasebook. "Do you have many interests?" asks Raymond, before their first clinch. The couple get hitched after a mere three weeks, and the action shifts to Raymond's family home in France where, under the eye of his prickly mother, desire changes to disappointment.
If the show is on the slight side, it is played with finesse by its young cast. The principal characters all extend small kindnesses to each other - and withhold them. Lillian's older sister Nerris is played with a combination of tetchy disapproval, wounded maternalism and warmth. "Do you know how this will end?" she asks.
The production, briskly directed by Emily Watson Howes, unfolds in short scenes punctuated by freeze-frames. Nuances - a glance here, a gesture there - are as telling as the sparse dialogue: Raymond's mother speaks only in French, but we always know what she is getting at. It all adds up to a promising if low-key piece about the quiet attrition of a marriage. What a pity it is on at one of the Fringe's most unforgiving venues, as clammy and stifling as a rush-hour tube train.
