Stage review: My Romantic History, Bush Theatre

In the beginning was the word and the word was "relationships" and Adam and Eve were pretty much screwed from then on because Adam was an oaf-ish man-boy and Eve, well, the clock was ticking for Eve and if Adam was not the real deal he was, sadly, Eden's most eligible.

And so it goes. Several thousand years and many billion bodged unions later, and the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve haven't really evolved much beyond the first clattering collisions that begat the rest of us.

Tom and Amy are nothing new. Their story - of awkwardness, misunderstanding, resentment, struggling, trying - is as old as the hills if the hills were in perpetual conflict with each other (like the Alps then).

But if writer DC Jackson doesn't bring much original to the boy-meets-girl party what he does bring has energy, quick-fire wit and laughter - of the cathartic been-there-done-that variety - and he posits a plausible story that, because it covers every particular in excruciating detail, also feels strangely personal.

So we have the flashbacks that tell how Glasgow office worker Tom (Iain Robertson) and Amy (Alison O'Donnell) were wounded and haunted by their First Loves. How settling, for then on, was an inevitable consequence of that livid scar tissue.

We see the office relationship stagger from its post-work drink beginnings to something more - and less - substantial.

This from both points of view to illustrate selfish motive, souring prejudice and the purpose of subjective memory to salvage ego.

Director Lyndsey Turner brings a briskness to proceedings. The visually appealing set (by Chloe Lamford) is packed with boxes that became beds, bar stools and receptacles for disco lights, sheets and a Guinness, abandoned half-drunk like its owner.

The three-strong cast is forever shuffling these props in an energetic performance. (At one point Tom photocopies the terror on his face - a Scream for the 21st century.)

Rosalind Sydney is winning as so-happy-in-love-it-makes-you-sick Sasha while doubling, and trebling, as Tom's boyhood pals. Alison O'Donnell is mouthy and muddled in the same moment and Iain Robertson is a Scottish Dudley Moore with a tremor in his voice that is sole true possession of a man with no ambitions beyond the next twitch of pleasure.

Despite its casual cruelties, DC Jackson's clever and bristling play has a good heart and romance - of a very modern variety - deserves to win the day.

– From November 2010