Set on a Saturday night in an unnamed Lancashire town, it is a litany of drinking, snogging, shagging, borrowing and begging that is rescued from wrist-slitting misery by the irrepressible vitality of its characters and its language.
But it is hard to see why John Tiffany should have shifted from directing Harry Potter And The Cursed Child to this hardcore slice of life on the edge of despair.
Related articles
A brilliant cast illuminate the short, sharp scenes and even mine humour from the darkness, including a rampant Pat Phoenix-type who struggles to undress a drunken young squaddie until she sees the pathos of her ways and a Jack-the-lad street dweller who dances with a shopping trolley to Swan Lake.
Sad, funny and raucous it is as if the Fat Slags from Viz had been dramatised by John Cooper Clarke.
ROAD Royal Court, until September 9. Tickets: 020 7565 5000