Midsummer [A Play With Songs], Theatre Royal, Brighton, May 17 until May 21

Helena and Bob are both 35, lost and trying to work out what to do with their lives.

When they meet in a wine bar they are clearly unsuited – she’s a high powered divorce lawyer embroiled with a married man, he’s a gopher for a paranoid gangster.

They have a brief, messy tryst on midsummer’s day and suddenly everything starts to change.

Based around two actors, a bed and two guitars, Midsummer is theatre at its most basic and imaginative. The rough set seems a little out of place in the grand surroundings of the Theatre Royal, perhaps being more at home in a Fringe venue.

Playing with theatrical conventions, David Grieg’s script sees actors Cora Bissett and Ewan Donald regularly break character to narrate scenes direct to the audience and give alternative viewpoints of pivotal moments.

When the pair embark on a lost weekend, the style suits the feeling of abandon, with its snatched scenes, fast-paced movement and infectious excitement.

The songs capture the inner feelings of the characters but frequently do little more than underline what has already been explained by the narration.

The idea may be that this is an anti-musical, but if the songs were taken out, the play would still remain pretty much intact – something which couldn’t be said of a good musical.

Bissett is clearly the more powerful singer of the two, often eclipsing Donald in the duets.

But when acting, the pair are perfect at creating both the necessary awkwardness of the relationship and what ultimately keeps them together.