WHEN Alan Ayckbourn premiered his sci-fi black comedy Henceforward at the SJT in 1987, as its title suggested, it was set in the bleak near future. Around 40 years hence to be precise, and now that time is now, he has gone back to the future to stage it again with the benefit/hindrance of hindsight and what has come to pass in the stampede of technology.

Aided by Rebecca Cartwright's costume designs, as well as the presence of robot servants, it still occupies the imminent future (although the men's fashions will surely never catch on).

Ayckbourn's dystopian vision of gated communities, police no-go-zones, surveillance cameras, rival vigilantes (in this case the Sons of Bitches and Daughters of Darkness), bleepers/mobile phones, tinfoil instant meals and electronic, sampled music have all become part of our lives. Only a personalised alarm system concealed within a pullover causes bemused, mocking mirth, among Ayckbourn's protagonists and the audience too.

In an experimental play where so much electronic future communication is predicted, it is the timeless human characteristic of an inability to communicate – to the point of disconnection – that prevails. Ayckbourn's central character, Jerome (Ayckbourn company stalwart Bill Champion) is a washed-up, geeky electronic composer, who taped and sampled everything in his London flat until his wife (Jacqueline King) and daughter (Jessie Hart) left him four years ago when his creativity promptly dried up.

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Robot woes: Jacqueline King and Bill Champion in Henceforward. Picture: Tony Bartholomew/Turnstone Media

Solitary, sour, self-obsessed and anti-social, he couldn't and still can't feel love; he ignores every video message from his beleaguered musician friend Lupus (Andy Cryer) and puts a premium on observing and using others for his work: an occupational hazard for a playwright too.

This emotional numbness and lack of humanity extends to his one companion now being a malfunctioning android nanny, equipped with a limited repertoire of recorded words from his estranged, scornful wife and later from awkward actress/escort Zoe (Laura Matthews), who he hires with a view to her pretending to be his model new wife to persuade a child well-being officer he can look after his daughter.

Significantly too, Russell Dixon's gadget-laden, by-the-book officer, Mervyn, has no grasp of what it is to be human: a typical Ayckbourn assessment of hopeless bureaucracy.

Henceforward's future world now has an increased sadness, loneliness and desperation to it, where once its prescience would have felt strange as much as scary.

Above all, however, Ayckbourn's cast brings out the abiding human foibles that feed the humour in the unpredictable encounters with pre-programmed but erratic robots, first played temperamentally by King and later, after an upgrade to servile pretty perfection, by the outstanding Matthews. Champion and Dixon's brace of deeply unlovable men have a darkening menace to them, but still with room for comedy to bounce off their awfulness.

Henceforward runs at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 8. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com