Adam Rojko Vega and Justin Edwards in Dogstar [Pamela Raith]

DAISY Hall’s tragicomedy, Dogstar, is set aboard a mid-19th-century whaling ship. It’s stuck in ice, there’s a man below deck who’s dying and the captain is holed up in his cabin.

Three members of the crew are losing hope of being rescued. Sam (recent RADA graduate Abdul Jalloh) is the youngest and wants to be treated seriously, keen to ascend the pecking order. Gorey (Adam Rojko Vega) likes to lark around while Babben (Justin Edwards) claims seniority by dint of his age.

Their captain drove them too far in search of a dwindling whale supply and now they’re stranded. Sam harpooned a young whale, which the crew fear has cursed them.

None of the men particularly like each other but they put their differences aside. As they wait for salvation, we learn about their pasts and their aspirations. Then something strange happens. Each time someone dies, there’s a flash of light that they believe is a portal into the world of the ship’s owner Michael Carmichael, who leaves behind a silver watch and dressing gown. Can the portal offer them an escape or is it a hallucination brought on by scurvy?

Dogstar is an intriguing 90 minutes, simply staged by Lucy Morrison in Hampstead Theatre’s intimate studio space, with Hannah Schmidt’s timber beams and fluttering lanterns evocatively lit by Holly Ellis. While the acting is uniformly strong and Hall finds comedy in the men’s interactions, her second play feels a little undercooked to satisfy fully.

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Until December 5