Think of Euripides and it’s nigh-on impossible to keep sex from your mind. And Cave, Steve Hennessy’s fantastical tale of the Greek tragedian’s legendary last days exiled in a mythical cave, bursts into libidinous action with the space hopper-round Helen, a pregnant follower of Dionysis who calmly upends Euripides’ loneliness with a wine-soaked series of home truths.

Punchy satire and a sure touch make light work of Euripides’ terrible plight. He’s been struck down by a nasty case of writer’s block, his audiences are growing tired of his political doggedness and threats are made on his life after he protests at mass murder committed in the name of so-called democracy. His entire life is left in a parlous state as he cowers miles from his home city of Athens.

The cave itself is horrifying: stark and stinking and replete with ‘summat’ in the woodshed that may or may not be a Cyclops. But the slew of cataclysmic events are given an almost jolly makeover by a trio of assured actors.

Runaway slave Helen, a sort of ‘nouvelle-Bacchae’ played with acute good humour by Nicky Felstead, enchants the bewildered playwright.

Alan Coveney, as Euripides, is erudite and endearingly beset by personal doubts. And with a return to the cave of the playwright’s lover Theodoros, armed with a morally-dubious peace offering from warring generals, astonishingly assured actor Oliver Millingham imbues the young Athenian with a generous dose of elegance and welcome sense of absurdity.

Even this reviewer, half-Greek and with a name meaning ‘wisdom’ , can be foxed by the intricacies of Attic tragedy which Euripides made his own; but Cave, benefitting from Andy Burden’s sensitive direction and some whip-smart dialogue, is a marvel.

Sophia Lomax