If Philip Ridley's latest was simply the piece of by-numbers psychosis it threatens to turn into, it would be tedious but largely palatable.
It becomes, however, one of the most gratuitously unpleasant works in months, where plot, character and general point all come a distant second behind a long-past-its-sell-by-date desire to shock.
Initially, it seems Ridley has done something that is at least structurally intriguing, namely weaving together a pair of distinct dramatic strands.
There's the familiar domestic drama, as two messed-up grown-up brothers argue over their late mother's legacy, and the immigration drama, which sees hijab-wearing 15-year-old Lilly give an account of harrowing brutality in her unnamed home country.
These characters form an uneasy, unlikely threesome in Alan and Terry's mother's living room, however, and we long for someone else to arrive. Then we get Medic, and after him Garth, and really wish we hadn't.
In this sort of play, the past is always uncertain terrain. The present, though, is even less predictable and I think Ridley is trying to say that young people today are traumatised and brutalised by the world around them.
However, with characters like these, whose emotions and motivations are as random as the movements in a game of pinball, it's impossible to give two hoots about any of it.
There's undeniably a certain demonic energy to the acting in Lisa Goldman's production, which has Soho's playing space needlessly reconfigured into a traverse staging.
John Macmillan makes mad Medic verbally dextrous and terrifyingly unhinged and Jade Williams does a fine job with that enormous monologue of Lilly's.
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But is Lilly really what she seems? Is Medic? Is that plastic doll meant to represent a real baby? I sincerely suggest you don't go to find out.
Piranha Heights
Soho Theatre
Dean Street, W1D 3NE
