The Aspirations of Daise Morrow is a funny, delicate and moving adaptation of Patrick White’s short story Down at the Dump, impressive in its staging and in the use made of Zephyr Quartet under musical director Hilary Kleinig.

The Playhouse stage is carpeted with what looks awfully like real grass and leaves and the audience is placed around a central mound on folding wooden chairs - first in, best seated. Above, a backlit canopy becomes the sky as the Whalley family are about to spend a day scavenging at the local dump. Mum (Genevieve Picot) and Dad (Paul Blackwell) Whalley make a cheerful living from what they find. Their son Lum (James Smith) seems set on the romance of a life driving trucks.

The other family in the story is the Hogbens. Myrtle (Blackwell) is scandalised by her free-thinking sister Daise (Lucy Lehmann) in life and on eggshells about the funeral after her death. Her husband Les (Picot) is a town councillor but it’s Myrtle who has aspirations of refinement and those are used to try to stop daughter Meg (Lehmann) becoming another Daise.

Shortly before her death Daise takes in an old man, Ossie (Smith), and that upsets Myrtle even more. Watching Blackwell do an upset refined 1950s Myrtle in a little 1950s black hat is one of the highlights of a show where the actors move freely between characters, genders and narration. And where Zephyr Quartet are scattered among the inner audience to provide music to support the action and the mood.

Picot turns in rich performances as Lum’s life-loving mum and as Les, the somewhat insensitive town councillor. Smith goes effortlessly from the somewhat gormless Lum to Ossie, profoundly distressed by the death of Daise. And Lehmann morphs beautifully between young Meg and her scandalous aunt Daise, who is really a life force that the rest of the characters could learn something from.

Everyone shares narrative duties, moving around and in and out of the rows of chairs in a way that brings the audience into the action.

Cemetery and dump are appropriately side by side in this story of suburbia. The central mound of the set can be a place for a first true interaction between the young people as well as a burial place. With earth and flowers thrown into it a wheelbarrow becomes the grave.

White’s vigorous and sardonic eye for class and culture in mid 20th-century Australia firmly stops this from becoming sentimental. And the playing from the actors and the musicians supported by the challenging design of the space supports the dry humour and the deep recognition of times and places and how life should be lived. See it.