I’ve decided: if Engraved were a coffee it’d be a macchiato, which is an espresso with a little crown of foamy milk. The new play from Serendipity Productions is small, strong, and starts off frothy before packing a big punch.

It’s a two-hander written by student Erin Malinowski (who also co-directs/produces with Leah O’Grady) about two troubled twentysomethings, Harry (Liam Elkind) and George (Darcey Willing). Our main characters meet by chance in a graveyard, when they discover their deceased relatives - Harry’s mother and George’s younger brother - are buried next to one another.

Thanks to Harry’s compulsive chatter, the two discuss their respective losses in a conversation by turns funny, sad, and painful. At first, the characters seem like polar opposites: Harry is a ball of anxious, puppyish energy, and George is coolly reserved, speaking in blunt observations when she deigns to speak at all. As their meeting goes on, however, they find a shared language. Harry was raised by a single mother, and lost his grandparents young, after which his mother began to drink heavily, to the detriment of her mood and parenting ability. George’s younger brother had severe learning difficulties and behavioural problems, requiring the lion’s share of his family’s focus until his death aged fourteen.

Losing family is a specific kind of grief, and what Engraved does masterfully is it illuminates how Harry and George were impacted by both the absence and presence of their missing family members. Both characters clearly feel profoundly conflicted about admitting to how their family members impacted their lives. It’s abundantly clear how George became so stoic and hyper-independent, having learnt young to be self-sufficient. And in Harry, you can see the jittery after-effects of growing up walking on eggshells - always filling the silences, then worrying he’s said the wrong thing. It’s a pleasure to see two characters so richly yet gracefully drawn.

What the piece also beautifully conveys is the sense of exhaustion its two - really very young - main characters harbour. When you grow through a turbulent childhood, adulthood can feel like a sort of vast, empty aftermath. As can grief. More than wise-beyond-their-years, George and Harry feel, heartbreakingly, tired beyond them.

Both actors are excellent, if occasionally out of sync with one another. Even beyond their characterizations, Elkind gives a far more theatrical performance than Willing, whose work is more delicate and cinematic. It at times felt as though they were appearing in two separate productions of the same play. The actors also had good chemistry, but largely seemed to connect more to the audience than each other: there is very little eye contact throughout the piece. I couldn’t help thinking it would strengthen their exchanges further if the audience felt more of a sense of the two actively inspiring each other to speak.

But these are minor criticisms of a beautifully written, compellingly performed piece that ultimately manages to compress big ideas and profound, complex emotions into under an hour. Engraved lives up to its title - it certainly left a mark.