TORBEN Betts made his breakthrough as resident playwright at the Stephen Joseph Theatre under Alan Ayckbourn's artistic directorship in 1999 with A Listening Heaven. He returns this summer with The National Joke, or "A Not Listening Hell", as you could call it.

Like Tim Firth, Betts benefited from the early patronage of the Scarborough theatre, initially in the lunchtime slot in the restaurant, and if Firth has since enjoyed the more stellar career, Betts has been among Britain's consistent writers of black comedies with bags of social observation, cultural scepticism, Leftist political pep and invariably unhappy endings.

They are bloody funny, as in bloody and funny, and so it is a delight to have Betts back on the East Coast for the world premiere of his state-of-the-nation political and family drama.

The politics comes in the reptilian form of Rupert St John Green (Philip Bretherton), a Tory MP for one of those immovable, safe country seats. A self-pitying drunk, with a mobile phone at the end of his arm more often than his second wife, he craves one final prize from the Prime Minister: a knighthood to accompany his retirement years at his palatial country manor.

The political satire is forthright and fatalistic but not in the vicious league of David Hare or Armando Iannucci's The Thick of It, as it tends to re-state familiar Tory traits in Rupert's odious ogre rather than hit harder with new insights.

York Press:

Cate Hamer, front, and Catherine Lamb, in The National Joke. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

By comparison, the family politics in The National Joke is heading for the venerated top table of Ibsen and Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Ayckbourn himself, the best male writer of female roles on the British stage over the five decades.

Betts writes of three generations of women, who fail to listen to each other: Olivia (Cate Hamer), Rupert's perennially harassed second wife, reminiscent of Ayckbourn's retinue of frustrated women; Mary (Annabel Leventon), her London-centric, poisonous mother; and Charlie (Catherine Lamb), Olivia's wayward daughter from her first marriage to a heavy-drinking musician, now decamped to Australia.

Olivia is an alcoholic who, unlike Rupert, has stopped drinking but is burdened with an uncaring, egotistical husband who neglects both her and their wild young children. They are far too feral for Mary, an insufferably stuck-up old stick, incapable of showing love to any of her daughters, none of whom speaks to the others.

Charlie, who hates to be called Charlotte, has turned up with Dan (Guy Burgess), a Liverpudlian socialist and addiction counsellor, who has become hooked on Charlie during her time in rehab, to the point of wanting to leave his wife and family for her. Dan's part is the least well drawn, sticking out like a sore thumb in more ways than one.

Betts, however, writes particularly well of barren, selfish, drifting, moneyed lives – Olivia knows nothing of her daughter's addictions, for example – and of the corrosive impact of alcohol and drugs (and political ambition too).

If the filming of Rupert's pompous outburst against "oik" hecklers leads to his being the "national joke" of the title on social media, Betts's bitter home truths are universal, as dark as the central motif of a solar eclipse in Henry Bell's sharply directed, superbly acted production.

The National Joke, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in summer rep until August 20. Box office: 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com