YOU are seldom waiting for Godber. The Upton-born playwright, now running his own John Godber Company after his halcyon Hull Truck years, makes the word "prolific" look inadequate.

No sooner has the coal dust settled on his mining community drama Shafted and the scaffolding been taken down from his state-of the-arts grumble Poles Apart than Godber returns with The Empty Nester's Club, and this time he is keeping it in the family.

Prompted by his own experiences as the Godber progeny head over the sunset for pastures new, he has written of the feelings of "all parents facing up to the prospect of life after their children have left home".

Godber's wife, the actress and writer Jane Godber (or Jane Thornton, as she appears under her familiar stage name) is joined by their daughter, Martha Godber, returned to the nest since completing her first year at LIPA, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.

After presenting both Shafted and the perennial Godber favourite, Bouncers, on tour in Beverley over the past year, the John Godber Company has given his latest premiere to the blossoming East Riding Theatre, and the 85-minute play is likely to undergo further changes before fleeing the nest for a tour that may well visit York Theatre Royal.

York Press:

Jane Thornton as Vicky Barrett in The Empty Nester's Club

I write "further changes" because Godber has already made one significant alteration since the press release that mentioned only Jane and Martha's participation. He decided to add a third player at short notice, Robert Angell, such a safe pair of hands from his work for Green Hammerton's Badapple Theatre and in York Theatre Royal's The Railway Children.

Angell completes the triangular structure, as Phil Barrett, the restless husband to Vicky (Thornton), who is working her through a bottle as she prepares to address the inaugural meeting of The Empty Nester's Club self-help group. (Shouldn't that title be plural, or is the placement of the apostrophe emphasising the feeling of abandonment and loneliness?)

Who should turn up before the meeting starts but daughter Milly (Martha Godber), back without warning from university: not ideal when your mother wants to talk about how much she is missing you.

Godber structures his play around Vicky rehearsing what she will say, enabling her to talk directly to the audience as the hyper, demanding Phil and bright but unsettled Milly weave in and out of the storyline: a familiar Godber device in his two-handers.

On this occasion, it leads to a rather linear style of theatre, without the flowing movement of his best work, but with emotion to the fore, as both husband and wife struggle with the sudden hole in their lives, whereas Milly blithely takes every wilful change in her stride.

In Godber tradition, there are moments of blunt, ruddy Yorkshire humour; expressions of frustration at the world around him; a comment or two on the social divide in education, and a darkening of clouds in the adult world. That darkness should next be turned into a play without humour, one that takes longer to write and lingers longer.

The Empty Nester's Club, John Godber Company, East Riding Theatre, Beverley, until Saturday. Box office: 01482 874050 or eastridingtheatre.co.uk