It's not difficult to see why a number of people have fallen in love with Nikorn Saetang's plays. They are simple but never easy. They are sweet but weighty. They are gentle and comforting. Nikorn is one of the few Thai theatre directors who consistently produce original scripts. He's a mature writer who has stepped out of the realm of "me, my feelings and me". Yet in a time when it's not very becoming to be sappy, he's not afraid to be sentimental. He doesn't shy away from speaking directly about love and other feelings that some of us would rather conceal with cynicism or nonchalance. All these qualities have come to define his troupe, 8 x 8 Theatre Group.

The company's latest creation, Wan Dab Fun (End Your Dream), also possesses the same charm and accessibility of its predecessors. However, in this production, written and directed by Nikorn, the visual palette bursts with new life and energy. Perhaps it has something to do with the larger new space, Democrazy Theatre Studio, which provides more flexibility than at the 8 x 8 Corner in Sam Yan, where he ran a cafe-cum-theatre before being evicted more than a year ago.

The semi-fantasy Wan Dab Fun takes us inside the dreams of a long-time loving couple, Ek (Surachai Kolid Midum) and Pheung (Akira Hmodsakul). Dreamy and ambitious to the point of not knowing what he wants, Ek struggles to make himself and his live-in girlfriend believe in his flights of fancy. He has a knack for fixing electronics, but he refuses to accept it as his passion or profession. With little talent in squeezing oranges, the prospect of continuing his father's orange-juice business seems bleak. His dream of opening a bakery-cum-cafe-cum-flower shop sounds messy and laughable.

Pheung, while supportive, is tough, candid and realistic. Ek sees the haze in the polluted capital as beautiful fog, while she's convinced it's smog. She once dreamed big, too, until she realised she couldn't be a princess or was too short and plain to be a model or too poor to build her own school. Unlike Ek, she's stopped chasing her fantasies and is content doing what she does well.

Because of her apparent lack of dreams and ambition, Pheung is removed and barred from Ek's dream by a small corps of the dream police.

This kind of couple dynamic could have easily become a hackneyed story that romanticises starry-eyed idealists and condemns those who have given up and given in to the system. However, Nikorn takes the dreams of Pheung and Ek out of the realm of sophomoric insights and fantasies and slaps them with some adult realities. The play is about growing up, getting real and wising up. It's about doing all those things with another human being. The play addresses the fears and the dilemmas of young people hoping to strike gold with tenderness. Is there no room for childhood fantasies in the adult world? How do we reconcile the things we love to do with the things we're good at?

Pheung and Ek meet again in a thick haze that prevents them from being able to see one another. They work out their dreams as two adults who must live together and have every desire to understand one another. One of my favourite moments in the play is when Pheung reveals her dream of having a real, wooden dining table at home. In this small, touching confession, Nikorn beautifully illuminates that a simple dream can be as elusive and difficult to achieve as a grand one.

And in the time when the things that grow too big, too fast, too ambitious, too soon, crash into irredeemable heaps, do we call the desire for something simple nostalgia or common sense? Is that person still dreaming or has she woken up?

Lighting designer Napas Deepralad gave the production a surreal look by bathing the white stage in the cool colours of dusk. The sets of Nikorn's productions are usually adorned with a table and two chairs or nothing at all. Wan Dab Fun is the most embellished production of his I've seen. While it remains very sparse, it has a more exciting energy. There's a table with a metallic top that actors roll in and out. On top of that table, Ek squeezes real oranges, kneads a big glob of real dough and sprinkles it with flour. In a small space, those seemingly insignificant actions truly awaken the senses. There's also a clever use of hanging props that start off as clothes lines, turn into flower decorations, then into the lines that separate the couple from one another. In another moment, small unassuming backpacks unzip to become bright butterfly wings.

Although Nikorn has moved the hearts of many theatre-goers with his stories, I think it's about time he handed his actors meatier roles to wrestle with. We want everything from the skinny to the fat to the guts of the characters. The 8 x 8 Theatre actors are a promising lot. If there's anything that shouldn't remain simple, it's the people in his plays.