After a tame opening last week, A Play, A Pie, and A Pint gets into its stride here with Catrin Evans' challenging, and unsettling, look at a couple's past relationship – and their different recollections of it.

Ella (Louise Ludgate) has contacted old flame Mike (Colin McCreadie), via Facebook, asking to meet to discuss something really important. The request is all the more puzzling to Mike as the couple haven't seen each other for 20 years.

Initially the piece mines a comic, Brief Encounter-esque tension, as they meet at a train station and nervously play catch-up. Both are no longer the randy teenagers they once were, and have kids of their own, but still score some character assassination points off each other.

The thoughts that have been plaguing Mike – is Ella here to reveal a long-lost love child, or offer up some dying Aids confession? – are also swiftly dismissed. But just when you think the play looks likely to continue as a likeable comedy of manners, Evans brings the subject of sexual consent during their relationship together into play, and the piece assumes an altogether much darker hue and force.

Anyone who has followed the story of Wiki-leaks founder Julian Assange will recognise the sexual, moral, and political debate that then explodes on stage.

McCreadie and Ludgate turn in fine, nuanced performances as the former lovers. However, the character played by Vari Sylvester, an old biddy who stops to chat to them, isn't just underwritten but totally unnecessary. That defect aside, this is thought-provoking stuff about remembrances of things past, and what constitutes acceptable behaviour.

Sponsored by Heineken

HHHH