For starters there is the realistically charming set by Charles Morgan, with a portion of a once-grand staircase that shows enough to suggest an upper floor within the confines of the limited Mint Theater stage. The set makes plausible the talk about the huge mansion hard to care for and the large grounds outside. Inhabiting the space is an excellent cast.

A crisis is afoot. Lady Margaret Denham, sympathetically played by Jill Tanner, is having trouble coping with running the place that is too demanding for a woman of her advancing years. Her husband, Sir Charles, well-played by Jonathan Hogan, has reached the stage where he mostly sits around and sleeps. In their employ is scene-stealer Barbara Eda-Young as Nurse, who gives a hilarious (tempered by pathos) performance shuffling around and wanting to make cocoa all day. She is a relic that is kept on through loyalty and habit more than for any seriously functional use.

The other inhabitant is Sir Charles’s brother, Harry, who is given a wonderfully appealing characterization by veteran actor George Morfogen. Harry’s wife died years ago and he spends his time recording the weather in a diary and is given to talking wisely, but living a rather abstract existence. He, too, is rooted to the estate.

The Denham’s older son, Robert (Paul Niebanck), has hatched a plan for his parents to sell the house to a developer who wants to turn the property into a school. He is not doing it out of greed to get money for himself, but as a genuine effort to do what he thinks best for his parents. Robert is a rather up-tight but caring individual representative of the kind of practical person in England of that period. In contrast his brother Frank (Christian Coulson) is a free-wheeling type who one might see as a forerunner of the decade-later swinging sixties. He makes a play for Robert’s wife Elizabeth (Katie Firth), whom he apparently had an affair with before she chose the more solid Robert. She is now loyal to her husband even though their relationship has become rather boring.

A touching bond develops between Elizabeth’s visiting daughter Felicity and Harry, who enjoys her youth, while she appreciates his tenderness and the grandfatherly interest he takes in her.

There is no question that the Denhams, and even Harry, would be better off practically without the huge deteriorating mansion. But they are so accustomed to their surroundings. Will the plan to sell be finalized? That’s the question that develops. And what would happen to Nurse?