What killed the 1990s free party scene? Was it the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill or the first Creamfields festival?

As Kieran Hurley, author of Beats, a play set at the tail end of the party scene, says, “The way to listen to electronic music nowadays is to spend £300 on a ticket.”

Free parties in muddy fields – and their position as a site of counter cultural resistance (albeit defined by hedonism rather than politics) – died when the money men smelled silver.

It’s obvious to say capitalism has a capacity to integrate subversive thought and repackage it for sale, but the idea that it has somehow crushed counter culture is wrong.

“There is always space for counter cultures,” argues Hurley, a Scot who is currently on a yearlong attachment with the National Theatre of Scotland as recipient of the Pearson Playwrights’ Scheme bursary.

“Today we live with a government to the right of Thatcher; to talk about the situation that we were in politically in 1994 and whether discussing it is still pertinent, well, the ideology of individualism is being propagated and writ large.”

And would it be far out to think that Cameron’s government could propose a bill in the mould of John Major’s Criminal Justice Bill banning “public gatherings around amplified music characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”?

Not that Hurley wants anyone to expect a show suggesting that if we all go raving and get mashed everything will be sorted.

“If people call Beats political I totally welcome that label because all theatre is political. But really it’s not banging any agitprop drums; it’s a simple, nuanced story.”

Johnno McCreadie is a 15-year-old growing up in Livingston, dreaming of the raves he’s heard about from his older friends.

As the big night unfolds, so do complex characters, such as his worrying mother, and a policeman and son of a former Ravenscraig steel worker, Robert Dunlop, who is portrayed with hope and humanity.

“Some people have brought their mums and said this describes to them what they weren’t able to say when they were younger,” explains Hurley.

“So there are lots of points of interest. It is not closed off for people who might be signed up to anti-authoritarian leftist politics, or mad hedonist party lifestyles.”

Hurley draws on his own experience of working-class Scotland in a post-industrial landscape for a show which is sometimes wrongly billed as solo.

Hurley plays all the characters sitting at a desk, but the repetitive beats from resident DJ Hushpuppy and swirling visuals from Jamie Wardrop are essential to the storytelling.

He calls it a “three-way relationship between three different art forms”.

Music fans will recognise tracks from the royal rave library, originally mixed by DJ Johnny Whoop, and anyone who was there in the 1990s will spot nods to the era such as Teletext and The Legend Of Zelda.

“I wrote in conjunction with the music because I never wanted it to feel like a story with wallpaper.

“The early scratch versions of the play were experimentation with form. The music and the writing feed off each other.

“Sometimes I would write something then I would talk to Johnny about what we would need to drive it along. Other times I would listen to tunes for inspiration to get a sense of the sonic map of what the show might be.”

Hurley says a few people have said that seeing the show has made them want to do things they’ve not thought about doing for a long time. Others have said, “I saw my mum in that, her anxiety”.

“The best one I had was a guy from Livingston who doesn’t go to the theatre but came because of the subject matter. He pulled me to one side at the end and said, ‘That was my life’.”

Hurley is quick to call it a coming-of-age story; a 15-year-old’s natural alienation growing up in suburban Scotland. But it is impossible to see Beats without questions of collective community identity (in the steel works as much as at the raves) and the right for young people to claim ownership of public space unravelling.

  • Beats is being performed at The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, Friday, November 22, and Saturday, November 23 at 8.30pm, tickets £12. Call 01273 201800