Ryan Shorthouse sees Joanna McClelland Glass's play Trying, and finds it anything but.

Cramped into the seats at London's cosy Finborough Theatre, the audience find themselves in the changeless, austere office of 81-year old Senior Judge Biddle – a man who has achieved much in his life, including being the US Attorney General under Roosevelt and the US judge at the Nuremberg Trials. His new secretary, the umpteenth one, is 25-year-old Sarah Schoor, a character based entirely on the playwright Joanna McClelland Glass, now one of Canada’s most successful writers, who worked for Biddle in 1967.

Following a successful career in law and politics, Biddle turned to writing full-time. But he is too old to write now, not even a letter to his publisher explaining the delay of his latest work, despite pushy Sarah trying to motivate him to do so. Instead, he spends his time clinging to the past: reading letters from VIPs and boasting about conversations with former Presidents.

It’s the same routine every day – he comes in half an hour before the secretary, demands the post be put out on his desk and coffee be made, procrastinates for a few hours, then goes home, reminding Sarah that – whatever she does - she must not touch the heater – the last secretary caused a fire, and was promptly fired. Frankly, Biddle is an ogre - bullying Sarah, correcting her grammar, cutting off any chat about her troubled personal life. But the distinguished actor Michael Craig (pictured) still makes him likeable. His constant repetition of phrases, and his forlorn look when he has forgotten something, makes him a loveable grumpy old man. Young actress Meghan Pepiel, in her UK stage debut, cannot get the attention or laughter of the audience as Craig does. It's meant to be a two-hander but it does feel like a one-man show for the most part.

The set is lit by a dim, golden light so, combined with the greys and browns in furniture and costumes, it seems to be endlessly autumn in Biddle’s office. But we know much is changing in the world outside: we see the development of Sarah’s pregnancy, hear the changing music from Ella Fitzgerald to psychedelic rock, bear witness to new technology such as a tape recorder, and listen to Martin Luther King on the wireless. The director Derek Bond cleverly contrasts the stillness of the world inside Biddle’s office with the rapid change occurring in the world outside. This aids the playwright’s narrative of a massive social and cultural change in the 1960s: from an era dominated by an awkward male-dominated elite reluctant to embrace change – emblemised by Biddle’s obsession with his titles and his equally successful lineage – to a world where the old class, racial and gender divisions are being questioned and transformed – symbolised most by young Sarah, a forthright female from the Canadian prairies who complains of people getting somewhere simply because they are well-connected.

The big social division in this play is the often-ignored misunderstanding and anxiety between young and old. Race, sexuality and gender – the theme of so many plays today - are important, but Trying reminds that in England today there is a worrying rift between generations. The latest British Social Attitudes Survey showed that two thirds of old people view young people as inconsiderable and disrespectful. And a British Youth Council survey showed that 80% of young people admitted to strained relationships with older people.

Trying is a very clever choice by the Finborough, adding to the theatre’s impressive repertoire of plays that take on modern social problems that are less reported, less familiar – mental health in January, anti-Americanism last autumn.

Surprisingly, however, the play is quite uplifting and moving. Not in a sloppy sentimental way; Biddle doesn’t have time for tears. Slowly, he and Sarah, old and young, come together. The first half was categorised by quarrel and irritation – with Sarah threatening to leave. But in the second half, we see that they have become friends: she soothes his arthritic knuckles hands, sits with him on his bed and looks after his money. He begins to trust her, shares stories with her and gives her wise words of advice about her strained relationship and future career path. He is frail; she is lost - so they become dependent on each other. What brings them together, after much trying, is their common vulnerability, not their striking differences.