DIRECTOR Eusebio Machado admits he had never heard of playwright Moira Buffini or her play Dinner, first performed at the National Theatre in 2002, until he was told about it.

"A friend of mine, the actor Alan Booty, said 'Here, read this, I think you'll enjoy it', so I did and I thought it was really amusing, " recalls the Portuguese-born Eusebio.

So amusing that he is now directing York Settlement Players' York premiere of Dinner, in which an artist, a scientist and a sexpot are coming to dinner.

Hostess extraordinaire Paige is celebrating the publication of husband Lars's self-help book, but the arrival of Mike, marooned in the foggy lane outside after crashing his van, provides an unexpected addition to the evening's entertainment.

"The script is very well constructed, and it's one of those plays where the ending is both obvious and obfuscated and you think 'How did I not see that?'.

"I think the audience will assume something and they'll be right to assume something, but they'll be wrong in what they're assuming, " says Eusebio cryptically.

He enjoys exploring new works.

"I like getting a script that hasn't been done often or preferably not at all, by a playwright no one has heard of, and that allows me to play with ideas with the set and design, which I may not be able to do if the play were better known, " he says.

The play's setting is an elegant dinner party in Twickenham, London. "But the idea that because it's an elegant party there must be fine cutlery, I don't agree with that. I think 'Why make it elegant when it's just a distraction from looking behind the façade?', so the design will be more stark, more bare, " he says.

Buffini leaves the characters similarly bare (not literally).

"At the end of it, you shouldn't like any of them, including Mike, who represents the audience figure looking at these rich and shining people, " Eusebio says.

"They're all limited people and Buffini says - if she's saying anything - that class is just not important. If someone dislikes you, it's not because you're middle or working class and there's a class clash, and it's just because they dislike you, " he says.

Summing up the 90-minute play, which will be performed without an interval, Eusebio decides: "I would say Dinner is probably a tragedy with darkly funny bits.

Today it would be called a dark comedy."

  • York Settlement Players present Dinner, Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, October 17 to 20, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Tickets: £5, first night and matinee; £8, concessions £6, for other shows, on 01904 613000.