THIS is a story of three partnerships, on and off stage.

South Yorkshire playwright Nick Lane and touring company Reform Theatre have enjoyed a fruitful relationship under director Keith Hukin, one that will now expand as Lane oversees a series of writing collaborations in which he will mentor and partner with burgeoning female writers, giving them the exposure or breakthrough that might not otherwise come their way.

What's more, if everything goes to plan, each new writer will pick up the baton of the previous play, taking its characters or milieu into the next one to build up a collection of connected works.

In the first creative liaison, Lane, writer of the charming memoir plays My Favourite Summer and Me & Me Dad, has teamed up with his real-life partner, actress Fiona Wass. Together they have written Hopeless Romantics, which involves the third of the aforementioned partnerships, although "partnership" might be pushing it.

Alan (Kivan Dene), a nerdy, insular, middle-class hedge fund manager, is living the "non-elective celibate" life. In other words, he is single, solitary, uncomfortable, a status all the worse for his sisters living romantic dreams with their successful partners, or so he thinks.

Faced with his ever judgmental parents inviting the family for an anniversary dinner, Alan acts out of character, recklessly asking Zoe (Hannah Douglas), the work-experience girl from the council estate with the untapped artistic talent, to pose as his girlfriend for the night.

Alan has problems with his over-heated borrowed car, bringing their journey to a halt by the roadside as they wait 40 minutes for the repairman to turn up: 40 awkward minutes spent getting to know/not know each other, as told from Alan's perspective through Lane's pen.

Alan is older, but not wiser, than Zoe, and he is unrealistically romantic too, whereas she is cynical, frustrated in romance, impatient for change and held back by a widowed father who drinks too much, eats too little her and fears her leaving home.

Filtered through Wass's pen, Zoe's perspective takes over post-interval, and Wass reveals a blossoming turn of phrase, an eye for frank humour and pathos and no little skill at adding more intrigue to two initially limited characters. Here is the promise of a writing talent and a female voice that should be further encouraged and explored, which is exactly the point of Lane's mentoring project.

As for Lane, he achieves most as a guiding hand, a role that surpasses his own writing contribution, where in essence he sets up the more rewarding second half.

Douglas fares better than the uptight Dene, who is rather more convincing in the role of Zoe's dad, but actors in a two-hander either have chemistry or they don't, and alas they don't.

Hopeless Romantics, Reform Theatre, Harrogate Theatre Studio Theatre,  tonight and tomorrow, 7.45pm; Saturday, 2.45pm and 7.45pm. Box office: 01423 502116 or at harrogatetheatre.co.uk