FRED is a lowly-paid clerk in Chicago in 1949. He has a loving wife and two sons, aged 14 and 18, and he wants desperately for them to have the education and success he lacks. His wife Bea is the realist she knows that Fred's dreams are beyond his reach, that his precarious health and low-brow personality will deny him the material benefits of promotion in his job. In a post-war, competitive world, he is destined to be a loser.

George Furth's Precious Sons, which has opened at the Focus, was written some 40 years after the time of its setting, and there is an old-fashioned, nostalgic quality about it. Fred has a vulgar tongue and an over-hearty approach to life, no doubt as a cover for his inadequacies. His rows with Bea ought to be killers, but their mutual understanding always pulls them back from the brink. By the end, with their sons gone, they are resigned to each other, even contented.

Guy Carleton is excellent as Fred, picking up on all the nuances of a complex role. He is matched by Ann Russell Weakly as Bea, tough out of necessity, and very cruel when that is what it takes to be ultimately kind. Malachy McKenna as the older son and Mariosa De Faoite as his girlfriend are young and uninhibited; Conor Whyte, in the difficult part of a 14-year old, has some presence, but is not quite the right fit in accent or appearance.

The play's theme and characters put it in the territory explored by a much greater work, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and it suffers from the comparison. Nonetheless, as directed by Paul Keeley, against Robert Lane's elegantly simple set with period music it has its own authenticity. A thoughtful drama of one family's trouble life.