An Intervention (Watford)

Mike Bartlett's An Intervention is a concentrated 90 minutes laying bare the relationship between woman A and man B. It's in five consecutive scenes, each heralded by a placard, played alternatively in front of tabs and in a black box-like space which occupies the rest of the stage.

You have the impression that director James Grieve and designer Lucy Osborne want to stop us feeling involved. Rachael Stirling (A) and John Hollingworth (B) rattle off their characters' exchanges at an incredibly quick pace; both give superb performances in the context of Bartlett's script.

She drinks too much and feels too intensely for comfort; when A seizes on a cause (or a person), you feel that it's a blinkered, downright suffocating approach. I would hate to have been a pupil at the school where she teaches (until she throws up the job) – or perhaps I would have been stimulated by her to try harder.

B's not a man for deep commitment, whether to a cause or a person, especially if the cause or the person seems to demand more of him than he's prepared to give. Hannah, A's complete antithesis, perhaps might have offered him his prepared middle way – but we learn that this relationship too takes a tumble.

The final scene is the most intensely dramatic one with images of the Middle Eastern conflict over which A and A so badly disagree projected across a tableau which is a coup de théâtre in itself. You will have to see the play for yourself to find out just what that is. It's worth the experience just because the performances are so good.

An Intervention runs at the Palace Theatre, Watford until 3 May.