Steve Dietz’s Shooting Star (St James Cavalier) may not be great theatre but it is certainly a beautifully-crafted work written for the commercial theatre.

The stars of the show are Mercieca and Butler, whose vocal and physical acting rarely falters even in an intimate environment

Two middle-aged people, who were lovers during their college years, 20 years before, meet accidentally and – after initial hesitation on the part of Reed (Edward Mercieca) – embark on an exploration and reassessment of their old selves.

Reed and Elena (Taryn Butler), who are waiting separately for flights to take them out of Houston airport, meet by chance after many years and are compelled but also tempted to spend a long time in each other’s company, by a violent blizzard that has rendered the airport snowbound and flights impossible.

It becomes clear that the two were very much in love with each other in the 1970s, but had conformed to the current college fashion to have an open relationship, thus excluding the idea of owning each other.

Since then, Reed has become a businessman, with a wife and daughter, and has led a very conventional life, enlivened by the occasional one-night stand with other women. Elena has never bothered with a serious career, and has continued to lead an unconventional life, a groupie still, always staying clear of any permanent relationship.

Dietz makes use of different techniques to let us look into the two characters’ minds and former lives: monologues directed to the audience; what is said in nostalgia, in mirth or rarely in anger by the two to each other; the intrusion of Reed’s daughter or wife through his mobile phone...

Elena does not have one but Reed has put his at her disposal. She abusively uses his phone on two occasions when she answers, in Reed’s temporary absence, calls from his family.

Elena is clearly and unashamedly unconventional, but her intrusion, behind Reed’s back, into his family affairs, is the play’s least convincing device.

The tone of this comedy has rightly been called bitter-sweet, and though it is frequently amusing – I suspect it is sometimes more amusing to a US audience than to a foreign one – the audience knows that past sorrows and current disappointments are never far from the two characters’ minds.

As we discover the mistakes the two have committed during their time as lovers, and the mistakes they commit now – such as Reed’s neglect of his daughter and his scant interest in her ambition to become a professional dancer – we are made to realise that their lives might otherwise have been much more fulfilling.

A crucial scene is the one in which Elena describes how desperately she had tried to avoid having an abortion of Reed’s child. Butler handles the narration with a feeling of quiet horror and guilt that makes it the emotional centre of the play.

As the relationship between the two develops and changes, the plot brings in two important events. Elena’s feeling for Reed, newly re-kindled, makes her offer to let him have her ticket on a last flight scheduled to leave the airport, an offer Reed reluctantly accepts with a new consciousness of Elena’s feelings for him.

This is only after he delivers the play’s angriest speech, in which he upbraids Elena for having tried to tell him how to live his life in the future when she has made such a mess of her own.

That last flight, however, does not leave and, as the airport announces it is closing down all its services, Reed and Elena get drunk on last drinks at the airport bar and then go on to drink Reed’s impressive array of miniature bottles of spirits.

Finally, left alone in the shut-down airport, the two, at Elena’s behest, try to see if they can still have sex together. The result is hilarious, with a strong hint of pathos in a scene that is well-acted and strongly directed by Chris Gatt, the production’s sensitive director.

I shall not spoil tonight’s audience’s enjoyment of the revelations made by the two late in the play. All I shall disclose is that the evening and night have made the two wiser than they were before, and certainly much readier to think less of themselves and more of the next generation. What the two characters disclose in their final monologues, given by way of an epilogue, confirms this and saves the play from having a conventionally happy ending.

The plain but well-designed set creates as much of an airport lounge as matters and deserves applause, but of course the stars of the show are Mercieca and Butler, whose vocal and physical acting rarely falters even in an intimate environment like the one at St James. Together, they create two characters who cannot be easily forgotten.

Shooting Star receives its last performance tonight. Buy a ticket if you have not yet seen the show.