BLACKOUT SONGS ★★★★

Hampstead Theatre until December 10 Tickets: 020 7722 9301

Joe White’s scorching new play deals with alcohol addiction. When a young woman (Rebecca Humphries) encounters a young man (Alex Austin) at an AA meeting, she sees him as a fellow traveller with whom she can escape the tyranny of rehab. He is dozy and monosyllabic, caught in a haze of memory loss and self pity; she is wired to the max on coffee and adrenaline and can’t stop talking. She has money, he has none. They flirt, fight and drink in a whirlwind of co-dependency that director Guy Jones speeds along with flashing neon scene changes and bouts of manic movement choreographed by Iskandar R Sharazuddin.

Time moves backwards and forwards, altering history as the unreliable narrators of their own story resort to acting out scenarios and role-playing to distance themselves from reality.

It is also incredibly funny, until it isn’t. What seems giddy and superficial gradually sneaks under your skin leaving indelible scars. She has a callous fling with another man, he is given months to live.

With nothing more than a few chairs to move around, Humphries and Austin deliver performances of amazing physical dexterity, psychological nakedness and intoxicating conviction.