Hannie Rayson’s Hotel Sorrento is on the surface a quiet piece about a family reunion in Sorrento, Victoria. But there’s more to the play than family fights and simple sibling rivalry as sisters Pippa (Joanne Booth), Hilary (Ruth Caro) and Meg (Kim Denman) reunite at their old home after 10 years. Pippa is a business success in New York, London-dwelling Meg’s novel Melancholy has just been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and widowed Hilary is looking after her teenage son Troy (Saxon Grey) and the sisters' father Wal (Dennis Coard) and has never moved away from the Moynihan family home beside the sea.

Pippa comes home to do a deal in Australia. Meg comes home with her English husband Edwin (Dion Mills) in tow for a break after the Booker publicity becomes too much. Has she written fiction or autobiography? Is it even literature? Deep down she wants to know if her sisters have read the novel. And what they think of it.

Meanwhile weekend visitors teacher Marge (Jenny Seedsman in a warm performance) and journalist/writer of opinion pieces Dick (a wily performance from Mike Smith, originally from Queanbeyan) are drawn into the Moynihan circle by their own curiosity about the novel, its author and the connection to Sorrento and Australia.

Events, however, go in unexpected directions which it would be unfair to reveal. Before the end of the play the excellent cast have taken it beyond a story of reunion. Secrets come out and there are surprises and twists.

It’s not without humour and the play has a rambunctious go at debating Australian identity. There’s a dinner party that comes magnificently apart over it all. The script is perhaps a little too self-conscious about this but the cast here play it all to the hilt, with Mills’ Englishness set wonderfully against varying degrees of Australianism.

Little things stand out, like the apparent stoicism of Caro’s Hilary, the sister who has stayed put despite tragedy and the moment when Gray’s nicely gawky Troy wakes from another bad dream. There’s a laid-back performance from Coard as Troy’s grandfather Wal, too proud to admit that his eyes are going but quietly asking amid the jokes for his grandson’s help in reading Meg’s novel.

Denman’s tense Meg is clearly over the English point of view but it’s clear that she can’t just fit back in. Neither can Booth’s somewhat ruthless Pippa (although she does seem to have escaped the US with her accent unscathed). The eventual unsurprising fireworks and home truths between the three sisters are satisfying.

Denny Lawrence’s well-paced production has an understated feeling and strong ensemble work. There’s a lean set by Adrienne Chisolm and atmospheric lighting by Shane Grant. Some may find it slightly dated but there’s a moving truthfulness about this play and this production. The rhetoric might occasionally be overstated but there’s a touch of dreams and ghosts and tragedy that deserves an audience.