Simon's Final Sound at the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre is an adult comedy

Tasmanian playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer is a prolific writer who has had 65 commissioned plays performed on five continents. Guy Hooper, who plays the title role in the touring production of Kruckemeyer's play Simon's Final Sound, says that although Kruckemeyer usually writes for young people, this time, working with Tasmania's Blue Cow Theatre Inc, he decided to write an adult comedy.

"There's a bit of language in the play and it follows a fairly adult concern."

Not that the adults in the play always behave like it. Simon is unemployed and at the beginning of the play is diagnosed with progressive, irreversible hearing loss.

"He's going to lose his hearing in a very short period of time," Hooper says. "He forms a plan to find a place where he can hear his last sound."

And not just any place. Simon recalls a childhood story told to him by his aunt about an island in the Pacific Ocean that runs entirely on sound, where all communication is through music and singing and decides to go find it. But to do that, he needs a boat.

Simon goes to a bank to try to get a loan and is interviewed by Michael (John Xintavelonis), who has his own problems including a bored wife, Ginny (Mel King). Hoping to rekindle the spark in their marriage, he agrees to lend the highly unsuitable Simon the money if he and Ginny can come on the voyage. They're overheard by Claude (Andrew Casey), Michael's obnoxious and friendless superior, who adds a touch of blackmail into the mix: he threatens to expose Michael for bank fraud, since Simon is such an unsuitable candidate for a loan, unless he is also allowed to come. Luckily, Claude has a boat they can use.

"The second half of the play is the boat trip and how events transpire for them," Hooper says. He's an actor with almost 30 years experience and has been based in Tasmania for nearly a decade. He remembers coming to Canberra as part of the troupe Death Defying Theatre in the 1980s.

King, the only woman in the cast, says Ginny is bored with her marriage to Michael, which has become stale and predictable and she's looking for change.

"He senses that," she says – hence the voyage as a way to try to save the relationship.

But one of the other men on the boat becomes infatuated with her and a rather unlikely love triangle arises.

"She's bemused by this," King says. "He's quite silly and funny and charming and handsome and very different to Michael in a way."

With all the drinking and partying and carrying on, she says it's, "like a bunch of middle-aged teenagers at sea –it's very silly ... but the main thing is, it's a comedy with heart". "It really is very funny but very, very moving."

A resident of Tasmania for the past two decades, King is looking forward to returning to the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre to perform: she was there about 18 months ago with the play, Food, and says she will visit her niece who lives in Canberra.

She's touring with the cast and a couple of crew members in a car – "me and five guys" – but says no situation like the one in the play will arise.

"We're all old and married and have got kids. Life will not be imitating art!"