THIS week sees the premiere of Grow Up, Grandad, at Stockton Arc, written and directed by Teesside playwright Gordon Steel.

The inaugural production for his new company, Steelworks, is a roller coaster of laughter and sadness about family conflict and the fraught relationship between stroppy prepubescent Poppy and her museum piece of a Grandad, existing on 1950s’ nostalgia and reluctant to budge.

Why she suddenly bursts into his time-warp house to discover she must live with him is a puzzle. The generation clash sparks with sharp exchanges and gobsmacked silences as she learns there is no mobile phone charger, no computer and the TV set is broken. How will she survive?

“You could do a jigsaw,” he suggests mildly, indicting boxes beside his armchair.

Poppy’s lippy attempts to drag Grandad into the 21st century – hilarious in a scene that has him staggering about on roller skates – make for fine-tuned physical comedy.

But there’s something Poppy – and the audience – is not being told. Periods shift between the present and 20 years in the future and comedy gives way to drama that turns frightening when Poppy's obstinacy provokes Grandad to lash out .

This is a highly charged start to the playwright’s aim to establish a professional theatre company on Teesside – and it reveals what wonderful young talent already exists.

On opening night, Eliza Dobson, 13, gave a gutsy, faultless performance as a rebellious tearaway, utterly convincing even when, as it later transpires, Poppy is not telling the truth. She and 12-year-old Rose Allen, alternating in the role on other nights, also play Poppy's thoroughly sensible descendent, Molly.

Stockton-born stage and TV actor Simeon Truby, who learnt his craft under Gordon Steel and back for the first time in two decades, gives a moving portrayal of curmudgeonly working-class Grandad, quick-tempered but soft-hearted.

Liz Carney creates distinctive characters as adult Poppy, a social worker and Poppy's aunt, Margaret.

Passion runs high in the second act, with set designer Alex Doige-Green’s tidy respite home bedroom contrasting with the clutter of Grandad’s earlier surroundings, symbolising a coming clean as missing pieces about Poppy's mother fall into place. As adult/child roles reverse and Poppy and ageing Grandad settle down cosily over a jigsaw, the sadness is it’s too late for his memory-muddled mind to see the full picture.