We start in the garden and then progress through the sitting room, kitchen and bedroom, before tackling them again in a different order. Tonight the Oxford Playhouse boss is showing us another kind of ‘play house’ — her own home.

A dozen of us are here to watch the witty and well-observed comedy Henry & Elizabeth, which is on a tour of the county, as part of the Playhouse Plays Out season, visiting the homes of people willing to stump up £120 (maximum audience of 12) for the privilege. It’s from the pen of Chris Goode, who has been perfecting this sort of domestic drama since his student days (he’s now 36).

The two-hander, featuring Philip Bosworth and Claire Burlington, focuses on a young couple who have been living together for eight years. Their plan is to celebrate that landmark with a party which Elizabeth, frankly, doesn’t want.

For the audience drawn into their life the marvel is that their relationship has lasted so long, she seeming such a warm and well-adjusted woman and he being clearly a bit of a nerd.

It is difficult not to warm to Elizabeth after her verbal mauling of her pal Jennifer over the way she eats pasta (a foodstuff whose name she rhymes with ‘faster’ — grrr!). Jennifer eats with anti-gusto,” we learn. “Picture Brian Sewell being corralled into doing the actions for The Birdy Song.”

Henry, meanwhile, is expounding on his fascination for words beginning with ‘o’, revealing his interest in what physicists call the Theory of Everything and geekily celebrating the wonders of computers.

A framework for the play is supplied by the children’s favourite song, There’s a Hole in My Bucket. Some of its lines are delivered with significantly greater fury than I recall hearing from a pantomime stage.

There is something a little odd in watching, in such close intimacy, a couple’s dissection of their troubled relationship. This applies particularly when, disconcertingly, eye-contact is established with one of these first-class actors.

There is no doubt, though, that our proximity adds significantly to the impact of the action. It hardly came as a great surprise on Monday to note one or two of my fellow viewers close to tears, not to say actually blubbing.