Playwright Ben Hutchison establishes himself as an original and very distinctive voice with a play that has the gritty realism of a kitchen sink drama merging seamlessly into the weirdness of dream.
The verisimilitude of Kenah Trusewich's set design, with its sharp delineation of interior and exterior space, convincingly introduces the self-contained world of a lonely pensioner and his young flat mate.
But nothing seems to be quite right and the ordinary takes on a hallucinatory quality as the burial of a beloved dog is endlessly deferred and romance between a pair of deeply antagonistic lovers blossoms in a shadow cast by a slowly decomposing corpse.
The absurdist dialogue brings to mind both Pinter and Beckett, while the humour has a macabre edge that will not be to everyone's taste.
But the writing is so startlingly idiosyncratic that the audience is enticed into an intriguingly odd world where a trio of variously damaged characters find a way out of their loneliness through the painful process of acknowledging who they really are.
Gareth Williams is particularly effective as an engagingly naive cipher for all kinds of conventional wisdom - especially when he is swept up with an infectious enthusiasm for a bizarre marketing strategy for a small business enterprise.
Mick Innes is utterly compelling as a hard-case ex-serviceman who moves to the beat of his own drum, while Shavaughn Ruakere captures the flat monotone of a woman who has withdrawn into a solitary search for atonement.
Read more: Shavaughn Ruakere: Out of the blue
The soundtrack comes from one of those strangely affecting 50s pop songs that gets under your skin by giving a precise geographic location for a tale of thwarted love.
The refrain, "There's a pawn shop on the corner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania", packs a powerful punch when sung a capella by Mick Innes as the story reaches its suitably eccentric climax.
What: Dog
Where: The Basement
When: Showing until August 30