BDNC Theatre Company's production of Two For Dinner For Two started out as a commission by Dublin City Council to create a work based on an everyday activity in a domestic space.

A couple making dinner doesn't sound like the most riveting premise for a play but, strangely, this production works.

And better still, it actually wins you over.

The set sees the stage in the Project Arts Centre transformed into a modern kitchen, complete with working oven and sink.

It is slow to start and takes a little time to get used to. The main characters, a couple, are simply called He and She. He is played by Karl Quinn, who mines a nice line in deadpan and She is played by Ruth Lehane.

The couple arrive home and, like most normal partners, have the daily discussion, beginning with the question "what are we going to eat?" It is at this point that the audience begins to engage.

The very mundanity of the script makes it funny and the familiarity of dialogue is cringemaking. She measures out the rice for dinner. "I'd say that's enough, " she says, looking towards him for approval. He says, "It's what we normally have."

The script cleverly reflects the daily routine of modern Irish apartment-dwelling professional couples. The kitchen is far too small for them to comfortably make dinner together; they get in each other's way, hindering rather than helping. But really the problem is each one of them thinks they know best how to go about the preparation of the meal, how best the chopping should be done, the adding of ingredients, the stirring.

The small, bristling corrections, the warnings to use a wooden utensil rather than a metal one on the non-stick pan, are also all too familiar.

The script is sparse and the gaps are filled with wonderfully illustrative clarinet, played by Bernie Balfe and expressive vocals by Tine Verbeke, both from the Concorde Contemporary Music Ensemble.

Amidst all the laughs however, Two For Dinner For Two is an indictment of how easily we slip into mundane routines - we're so busily engrossed in chopping vegetables we become oblivious to what's going on around us with our relationships inevitably turning into a wasteland of trivial repetitions.

The argument which the play moves towards stems from the usual domestic bugbears - the even distribution of chores, the proliferation of dirty tea-towels in the kitchen, the cupboard presses that are hung 'arseways'.

But of course, these irritations are just an excuse to vent the frustrations which are unavoidably created by living a routine life with a live-in partner.

But as the final monologue, an excerpt from the bible's definition of love, reminds us, "love is patient, love is kind."