When we hear the word “refugee”, there’s a certain picture that comes to mind – and it’s fair to say Otto Huberman, the elderly man in Judith Burnley’s new play Anything That Flies, is as far from that picture as you can get. 50 years after the Holocaust killed his family, he’s living in a nice flat in Belsize Park, having made his name and a comfortable living from inventing – among other things – a popular brand of speaker. After he suffers a mild stroke, his concerned daughter engages her friend Lottie to come and take care of him, much to his disgust. Not only is he fiercely independent, he also objects to Lottie’s heritage as a member of an aristocratic German family – but it turns out she has a tragic history of her own, and the two may have more in common than Otto thinks.

Otto’s cantankerousness allows for plenty of humorous moments, and the developing understanding and affection between the two characters is certainly heartwarming. More than anything, though, the play is a quietly devastating portrayal of traumatic loss – of family, friends and country – and its lasting impact over five decades. What the play does particularly well is to challenge assumptions: the idea, for instance, that anyone who wasn’t Jewish in 1940s Germany couldn’t possibly have suffered, or that a refugee who makes it to a safe (or, to use Otto’s word, sane) haven, their problems are somehow immediately at an end.

The production, directed by Alice Hamilton, also succeeds on a personal level, with two beautiful performances from Clive Merrison and Issy van Randwyck. Otto is an old man, increasingly frail and confused after his stroke, and Clive Merrison captures his volatility to perfection. He’s simultaneously proud and intellectual, rude and wildly inappropriate, frightened and haunted by loss – and any one of these personality traits can come out at any given moment.

As Lottie, Issy van Randwyck bears it all stoically, refusing to rise to her patient’s bait, though clearly troubled by both his repeated labelling of her as a Nazi and his growing physical and mental vulnerability. She’s a classy, intelligent woman, and like her we find ourselves wondering how she ended up on her hands and knees cleaning up an old man’s latest bathroom emergency; it’s only later that we come to understand she’s repaying a debt for an imagined crime committed in her childhood.

Emily Adamson and Neil Irish’s living room set fits perfectly in the intimacy of the Jermyn Street Theatre, with realistic light and sound from Elliot Griggs and Max Pappenheim. In fact, the production is relentlessly spot on in its attention to detail; the above mentioned bathroom emergency, for instance, leaves little to the imagination, and even before Otto seemingly breaks the fourth wall to relive the night his family was taken (a horrifying story that finally explains the play’s title), we feel included and completely at home in his flat.

Anything That Flies is on the surface a touching story about two very different people finding some common ground. But beneath that surface is something far darker, an exploration of the nature of loss on multiple levels – and it’s here that the play really makes an impact. This well-crafted production of a powerful new play is definitely worth a visit.