Most notable from the 2014 film of the same name, starring Maggie Smith, My Old Lady brings a charming aspect of Paris to the stage.

An American inherits an apartment in Paris that comes with an unexpected resident. Cynical, and at the end of his tether, he looks forward to selling the apartment his late father owned in the Marais district. But what he finds out there just appals him: his estranged dad had never told him he had acquired the property as a life lease, a typically French custom of ‘viager’ which he’s never heard of. As a consequence, not only will poor Mathias be unable to sell the apartment (at least as long as Mathilde Girard stays alive), but he will have to pay the old lady a pension as part of the bargain. Add to that Mathilde’s prickly daughter Chloé, some uncomfortable revelations about the past and the fact that he literally has no place else to go, wine seems the only consolation. Desperate to sell, his options limited, he’s forced to get to know these women better… Chloé and Matthias, both 50, still rage with the anguish of the unloved children they always felt they were.

That’s the springboard for Horovitz’s eloquent, funny, brilliantly paced plunge into parent-child relationships.