As the audience files into the Corpus Playroom, Harper (Emma Lewis) is already sitting on the stage. Scrolling through her phone, she appears as more of a sloppy stage-hand than a cast member. “This is not theatre,” we think. It is too mundane, too close to what we in the audience are doing as we wait.

But that is the genius of Far Away. Absurdist though it may be, the opening act appears all too familiar. A young Joan (Lucy Brittain) is staying with her aunt, Harper, in a quieter area than at home – she notes that she is able to see more stars. Yet the tension immediately draws the audience into the scanty scenery.

The scene is sparse, with only the red of a few household objects standing out against the black background. Dim lighting intensifies this almost monochrome image, suffocating the action. The gaps between speech are rendered all the more intense by the understated acting. Joan’s outfit, being blue, somewhat sticks out against the rest of the colour scheme. However, it does not distract from the constantly engaging duologue.

“The second act, in its disconcerting fragmentation, acts as a microcosm for the whole play”

The second act, in its disconcerting fragmentation, acts as a microcosm for the whole play. Short, staccato scenes of constant duologues begin to draw the narrative away from what the audience thinks they can comprehend. The mysteries of the first act seem to disappear under the labour tension of the milliners and the blossoming affection between Joan and Todd (Joe Orrell). It would be very easy for the pair to lose their emotional connection between the fractured scenes, yet they never fail to convince. Their relationship feels natural, against such an unsettling backstory… not that the audience is ever quite sure what the backstory to the play is.

It is clear that there are social divisions, rampant violence and (most potently for this version) a growing disconnect with nature, but the circumstances under which this has arisen are never quite clear. The discordant, industrial sound that breaks up the scenes, alongside the almost incomprehensible visuals afford us a glimpse into the world. However it is only ever a glimpse.

The three actors are forced to age with their characters. Having watched several comparative plays in which the individual actors have struggled to perform their character’s age as different from the main group, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it is handled here. Brittain in particular must grow from an innocent child into a fearful adult across forty minutes - she rises to her task admirably. Nor do Orrell and Lewis’ characters remain fixed: Harper shifts from a stern matriarch concealing a massive secret, to a world-weary woman who seems unable to handle any more; similarly Todd grows from an affectionate young man, to a soldier exhausted by battle. None allows their character to bleed into different iterations of itself.

“It is the final act in which the audience must finally admit their perplexity”

It is the final act in which the audience must finally admit their perplexity, for not even the characters understand their world any more. As Harper and Todd argue over allies, both human and otherwise, we begin to see how arbitrary the divisions we impose upon the world are. Quite frankly, what distinguishes a Latvian dentist from the global dentists? Such arbitrary distinctions define the divisions of the war.

Lewis and Orrell effortlessly handle the tumbling list of enemies and alliances – the cats allying with the French, the crocodiles who carry severed heads in their mouths like their children, the evil deer who have joined with ‘us’ three weeks ago. As the audience, we are confused, but so are the characters. The actors seem to come as close as it is possible to understanding however, which truly supports the absurdity of the play.

Enya Crowley’s powerful vision of climate catastrophe is demandingly confrontational, but vital. The small cast and much larger production team seem to work in perfect unison to deliver an urgent and startling message. In a fragmented play, focussed on division, we see the importance of unity.

“Enya Crowley’s powerful vision of climate catastrophe is demandingly confrontational, but vital”

Forty minutes is an incredibly short runtime. There is not enough time for tedium or even contemplation. It is an uncrackable egg because it is so brief. In a play this good, brevity would almost be a crime, if only it didn’t speak louder than anything else. We have forty minutes to digest the message: do we have as long to act on what we realise?

A quarter of a century after its first performance, Far Away only speaks with a more urgent voice than ever before.

‘Far Away’ is showing at the Corpus Playroom from Wednesday 26 February until Saturday 1 March, at 9:30pm.

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