As Joni Mitchell says, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. The opener for this latest lunchtime-theatre season of A Play, A Pie And A Pint imagines a world where women have somehow taken themselves out of the male-female equation. Alison Carr’s play, directed by Caitlin Skinner and presented in association with the Traverse and Stellar Quines, is an all-male two-hander. Billy Mack and Sean Connor play nameless men yearning for female company with their rumination on a shared predicament comprising the gist of the piece.

^{Pictures: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan}

The setting is a broken-down bench in a park, all ‘brown grass and broken bottles’, sometime in an uncertain future. Connor plays a younger man who doesn’t know much about the female sex, while Mack’s character is old enough to understand what’s missing. The pair meet through their phones on some kind of government app created to bring men together for company and conversation. Despite their best efforts, they find their route to companionship is clouded by both the absence of women and the hidden reasons behind this odd scenario.

Sarah Polley’s current film Women Talking explores this similar notion of a world where women desert men en masse. Carr’s play is a more gentle proposition, as the two men’s struggle to make connections sparks some gentle humour albeit with dark undercurrents. Until It’s Gone is a solid start to the new season. While short on physical craftsmanship, the confident performances and acerbic, locally attuned writing make this play worthy of attention, with a surprisingly emotional pay-off. The fault line between men and women is a hot topic right now, and Until It’s Gone explores issues of male responsibility in a sharp, often profound way. 

Òran Mór, Glasgow, until Saturday 25 February; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Tuesday 28 February–Saturday 4 March; see playpiepint.com for full details of upcoming productions in the season.