People hanging on to life by their finger-tips have a necessary sense of gallows humour.

Others with cosy, comfortable lives can afford to have philosophical debates about poverty and homelessness; but those for whom these conditions are a daily reality tell jokes - sometimes to mask personal tragedy.

In John Tempest's Homeless! the four main street characters - Doyly, Charmer, KC and Slappy - get by with the kind of raw banter, sarcasm and nostalgia that comes from camaraderie in extremis.

These men have got nothing, so they share everything - including their contempt for the corporate pretensions of modern Bradford.

For this "play with music", as John Tempest describes it, is a tale of two cities.

The first is the author's home town as it used to be before the ravages of the 1960s improvements' that destroyed Swan Arcade and Collinson's Café. This is the subject of a bitter-sweet duo-logue with music in the first half, movingly performed by KC and Charmer. This was a city with plenty of warm, friendly nooks and corners and places of endless interest.

The second city is what Bradford has become, a planner's dream and a citizen's nightmare. The implication is that designer cities into which people are supposed to fit are a cause of poverty and homelessness for people like former soldier Doyly, whose lives go unintentionally off the rails.

Tempest, who founded The Bradford Soup Run for the homeless 23 years ago, knows what he is writing about. Homeless! will rub some people up the wrong way; but then its author has been doing that ever since he joined the Dennis the Menace fan club at Bradford Grammar School.

Technical hitches plagued the dress rehearsal that I watched on Tuesday night. Making the lighting, sound system and back projections cohere with the words and songs on stage has proved tough for director Damian Shalks. The cast of seven, offering their services for free, have not had the luxury of a fortnight of stage rehearsals.

Making a set to fill the width and depth of the stage area must have been a headache for designer Malcolm Raper, but he has provided a meticulously conceived and solidly built series of structures.

Some performances were stronger than others on Tuesday, but Tom Reid as Slappy, Garth Rookes as KC and Barry Green as Charmer were outstanding in the way they reacted and inter-acted with one another. Green in particular has a Johnnie Casson presence, smiling at his lewd anecdotes about private parts and backsides in the first half and then poignantly revealing his back story in the second half.

At the core of Homeless! is a love story about how Doyly found and lost personal happiness. Simon Moore, a young man with a big physical presence, at times showed his self-consciousness by shuffling his feet and moving distractedly about the stage. This was a shame because some of his rejoinders were sharp and funny.

The way he sang his song, Crying and Dying Inside, demonstrated that with a little more confidence he can only improve.

Amanda Petty as Josie, Doyly's wife, Ally McVey as the Salvation Army officer and Collin Kinsley as the vicar relied too much on their radio-mics and need to project their voices more forcefully across the depth of the stage.

Sometimes the music seemed an adjunct to the show rather than an integral part of it. But where words and music fit as in What Have I Done?, Crying And Dying Inside, and And the Tears Come Falling Dow, they work very well.

  • Homeless! is on at the Hockney Theatre, Bradford Grammar School (Frizinghall Road entrance) until Saturday, starting at 7.15pm. Tickets from www.digyorkshire.com or on the door. All proceeds go to the Bradford Soup Run.