Jo Combes‘ sensitive production weighs the play’s competing arguments with gravity, compassion, and a sharp eye for the comedy of those quietly-maddening frictions that infest family gatherings. Mark Arends’ Eben is a portrait of high-minded weakness, his thwarted aspirations flaring into petulant fury upon contact with his stiff-necked wife’s self-righteous moral manoeuvrings. As the careworn paterfamilias, Christopher Ravenscroft takes infinite pains to protect Georgine’s Anderson’s fragile, fussy Agatha, whose sweet-old-lady dithering masks a dogged defence of the family’s dark secrets. Nicholas Gadd is bright-eyed, appealing and period-perfect as the reporter who brings the new century in on his coat-tails, and Gráinne Keenan plays the fallen-woman of the clan with a mixture of solidity, regret, stubbornness and simple pride.

Intimate in-the-round staging suits the tense, candle-lit intrigue of the play’s final act, with spectators craning over actors’ shoulders to catch a tantalising glimpse of secret, perhaps scandalous, poetic manuscripts. And if unshakeable shades of Byatt’s Possession haunt this revival, the company tackle Glaspell’s 1931 drama with unflustered confidence in its own distinct terms of engagement. Even-handed and humane, Alison’s House is another timely and thought-provoking find from The Orange Tree, unofficial London residence of forgotten dramatic gems, and quietly riveting ensemble acting.

Volleys of bantering repetition (that betray the text’s origins as an opera libretto) lend a note of overwrought comedy to proceedings, while a cast of eccentric characters straggle through a forest full of brooding poetic imagery. Skewed military necessity perverts the natural landscape into a ghastly parody of itself, where every tree hides a spy, each scarlet flower is a target, and war breeds screeching crows out of the carcasses of dead soldiers.

An unnecessarily ingenious set doesn’t exactly make the action skip along, but the division of the play into a series of tableaux suits the tale’s picaresque bittiness. An air of threadbare scenic illusion also sharpens the show’s satiric edge, and there’s a parade of dead dogs that plays a brilliant double-bluff upon the audience’s good-natured eagerness to suspend disbelief.

The company twinkles with ghoulish merriment throughout. Among a strong ensemble William Tapley as a black-uniformed messenger of ill-omen, and Michael Kirk’s mellifluous Mayor both make a good stab at stealing the show. Jonathan Broadbent, as baby-faced Vasco, exudes unthinking innocence, and a gentleness that verges upon self-satisfied indolence, in an unromantic portrait of all-too-corruptible naiveté. He doesn’t stand a chance against the unhinged certainty of Laura Rees’ visionary Marguerite, and between them this childishly hopeful pair of would-be lovers wreck their imaginary paradise.

Veering between silliness and savagery, at times The Story of Vasco feels like a mind-bending collision of Milligan and Lorca. Portents of doom mingle with running gags and daft slapstick amid a deranged carnage that blurs the line between logic and madness. War is the joker who gets everyone in the end, while a chorus of hungry crows scream their approval.

Chains of Dew is two-and-a-bit hours of sugar coating an extremely bitter pill. The well-intentioned friends of frustrated poet Seymore Standish descend upon his conservative home town, determined to ruin his reputation, thereby freeing his literary inspiration. Kate Saxon’s hardworking company handles the ensuing complications with commitment and panache, supported by some fine individual performances.

Ruth Everett, as birth-control campaigner Nora Powers, is the heroine of a screwball comedy, who never quite realizes that she’s strayed into drawing-room tragedy. All bobbed hair and scarlet frock, she propels the show to its unsettling climax, but her bright-young-thing optimism can’t comprehend the sacrifices being demanded and accepted in a rapidly darkening final act. Nancy Crane and Pia de Keyser bring a sharp-eyed, brittle poise to the local ladies who know much more than they’re letting on. Helen Ryan, as the poet’s mother, is a sweet, wise old lady, who’s perhaps as “cunning” as the dolls she fashions. But as she absent-mindedly rips the stuffing out of her creations, her appealing commonsense turns to something more alarming.

It’s part of the subversive charm of the Orange Tree that some of its patrons are in the habit of sneaking a gentle doze during the latter stages of long plays. But all eyes were open as the deceptive security of Glaspell’s slow story-telling gives way to the “grim, realistic comedy” of the last act, and audible gasps of outrage punctuated the play’s unexpected, and uncompromising denouement.

Once again, Sam Walters has unearthed a monumentally unfashionable old play that packs a hefty moral punch, and asks questions about the cost of personal freedom that many a liberated (post)modern would baulk at. Go and see this play. Go and see almost anything at the Orange Tree. It’s intermittently the most radical theatre in London.