The Ensemble Theatre Company’s current production of renowned American writer Cormac McCarthy’s (‘The Road’, ‘No Country For Old Men’) The Sunset Limited’ is a dark journey.

Here is the set-up. Two middle aged men, one white and one black, we never get to know their names, are talking over a kitchen table. White is a successful college professor and Black is an ex-con who has turned his life around after finding God.

Theirs is no ordinary chat. The black guy has just saved his white brother’s life. He stopped him from diving down on the tracks in front of a fast, on-coming Sunset Limited train. He’s taken him home to his humble subway tenement to try to instill some sense into him.

A man of unbroken, devout faith, he can’t understand how his white brother could so flagrantly throw away his life. What then takes place on stage is a huge battle of wits and wills. The white guy is desperate to leave his apartment, go back to the train station, and throw himself off the platform and make sure that this time he succeeds. The black guy, with the bible next to him on the table, is equally determined to turn his brother’s head around, and get him to see the light!

Above all, ‘The Sunset Limited’ is play about attitude. Essentially White has had everything in life, and is disillusioned with it all. Black has been through the school of hard knocks but lives life with great conviction and faith. Like a ghostly presence, shadowing their conversation, are the sounds of trains pushing through the subway underneath.

Jennifer Don’s tight production, in her directorial debut, serves McCarthy’s play well. Theatre doesn’t get much more minimalistic than this play.

Mark Kimurry gives a memorable performance as the world wearied Professor. Near the play’s close, there’s a key speech, strikingly delivered by Kilmurry, showing the depth of his characters’ darkness.“I yearn for the darkness. I pray for death. Real Death. If I thought that in death I would meet the people I’ve known in life I don’t know what I’d do. That would be the ultimate horror.”

Patrick Williams gives a convincing performance as Black, tested to his core by his white brother.

Clare Moloney’s set effectively recreated a small New York subway apartment, together with an overhanging set of lights, symbolic of the oncoming lights of a subway train.

McCormac’s haunting, dangling conversation, ‘The Sunset Limited’ plays the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli until December 12.