As the audience enters and shuffles around the dimly lit thrust stage, a man and a woman sit on either side of an enormous double bed, strumming guitars and singing to a soft, lilting melody: 'Love will break your heart in two/ Sometimes you really want it to.' Barely a beat into the play, this touching (verging on twee) image is shattered as they leap on to the bed to copulate graphically (and fully clad).
Coitus is interrupted for re-enactments of their first meeting in a bar some hours earlier. Bob's version: Helena asks him back to her flat for wild sex. Helena - 'She so does not say that' - claims she simply invited him to share her bottle of wine.
The tone is set for this theatrically thrilling but emotionally unconvincing romcom. In all the chaos and confusions of (petty crook) Bob and (divorce lawyer) Helena's frantic, alcohol-fuelled, reality-evading weekend, the only character to offer a sober perspective is the cuddly toy standing in for Bob's penis and giving him a 35th birthday life assessment.
Cora Bissett and Matthew Pidgeon perform David Greig and Gordon McIntyre's script and songs with incredible energy and skill, masking the shallowness of their characters. Greig's fine direction, not surprisingly, plays to the strengths of the text, emphasising its filmic qualities: split scenes, rewinds, reframing - even suggesting vertiginous crane shots, while McIntyre's sweet-but-samey music blends well with the action.
Oblique references to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, however, highlight the slightness of a tale that, although entertainingly presented, delivers less than it promises.
