"THANK you very much, enjoy," says a perky recorded message from writer, humorist, presenter and political activist Sandi Toksvig, as she introduces her new comedy drama.

Over its tow hours, against a rising tide of flood water – all too familiar to York, of course – it tells the tale of "five extraordinary yet forgotten women who come together one treacherous night to recreate The Great Escape senior citizen style".

In essence, it is portal for another group of "forgotten women" to make a great escape from not finding gainful employment on stage in their silver years: a failing that has repeatedly blighted the world of stage and screen where the likes of On Golden Pond, Driving Miss Daisy, Enchanted April or the brace of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films are all too rare.

However, in a Theatre Royal season partly programmed by an all-female group of actors and theatre-makers under the title of Of Women Born, Philip Meeks's three-hander Murder, Margaret And Me already has presented the fascinating relationship of writer Agatha Christie and actress Margaret Rutherford in their more senior years.

In truth, that was a better piece than Toksvig's Silver Lining, but its heart, if not its art, is in the right place and this is destined to be one of those shows where the audience, largely of a similar age to the protagonists, appear to be enjoying the (forced) humour rather more than the reviewers on the tour so far.

Some comedies, the work of Alan Ayckbourn and Tim Firth for example, have a natural flow and grace. Others, like the joke-fronted Silver Lining, are harder work, even for a director as adroit as Rebecca Gatward. We meet the characters one by one at an old people's home, Sheila Reid's former pub landlady, southerner Gloria Bernhardt, holding centre stage in her animal print onesie pretty much from the off.

Rachel Davies's Maureen Cookson is the grumpy northerner, headphones always playing music; Maggie McCarthy's May and Joanna Munro June are sisters in a simmering autumn of discontent with each other.

Enter Keziah Joseph's Hope Daley, ostensibly sent to rescue them from the clutches of Vera, a storm of Noah's Ark proportions, but in effect a rather selfish Croydon girl who runs a stroppy blog and has much to learn about community spirit. Enter, if not for long, Jed (Theo Toksvig-Stewart in his stage debut), a thief soon to be given short shrift.

And who's this? The "forgotten" St Michael (Amanda Walker), found alone in a room, with a box of sex toys and old advert catchphrases on her lips.

All of Gatward's cast throw themselves wholeheartedly into Toksvig's dialogue, none more so than Reid, but Joseph has particularly awkward lines, and only the relationship of May and June strikes a chord.

Sink or swim? It is hard to foresee Silver Lining having the silver lining of further tours.

Silver Lining, English Touring Theatre, at York Theatre Royal, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk