Lucy Kirkwood’s explosive The Children begins as a caustic, brutal comedy between a latemiddle-age couple (Hazel and Robin) and a friend (Rose) from many years ago who makes an unannounced visit to their seaside cottage on the east coast of England. The thin veneer of civility flakes away and the caustic nature of their relationships become apparent. What becomes apparent to the audience it that these three old friends have much more to discuss than just old times.

Why Rose has come now, after 38 years in which the three have (apparently) been out of touch, is part of the mystery. What’s clear from the microaggressions served with the tea is that she and Hazel, supposedly old friends, are each seething about something. Hazel expresses her chirpy fury in a kind of militant healthfulness: She boasts about eating sensibly and keeping fit through yoga while repeating with bizarre emphasis a self-help nostrum that sounds more like a threat: “If you’re not going to grow, don’t live.”

Very soon in the play the audience discovers that infidelity appears to be this play’s subject matter, but the tide shifts at this seaside cottage, and the audience learns that these three characters share more than intimacy. They also happen to be nuclear physicists who puzzle over what’s to be done with the nearby nuclear reactor that has been inundated by a tsunami as a result of an underwater earthquake.

The disaster at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan provides Kirkwood’s kernel of inspiration for this play, but Kirkwood’s script is so much more than a play about infidelity or our fears of living in a post-apocalyptic world. The Children is a mesmerizing story about three people trying to live as fully and truthfully as they can in a world that’s no longer in balance. This riveting comedy drama is not to be missed.