Delirium have already made quite the name for themselves constantly moving and evolving with the theatre scene since 2009. They are famed for exploring humanity: tapping into the way we work, think and feel through obscurity. Delirium have been known to present their premise through a multitude of prisms, incorporating movement and devised work to put their characters and their situations into an extraordinary world. One Minute is the company’s first delve into the world of plays with all the structure, predetermined themes and narrative that goes along with it. What better way to make that debut than with a work by Simon Stephens whose plays, like Delirium’s, are rooted, deeply, in the human? Stephens’ status goes before him and exists because his plays represent us, truly: our society, our mind-sets, our dislocation and our homes. So surely Stephens and Delirium are a marriage made in heaven? Well, in this case, not so much.

The relationship between the script and the company is rocky at best. There’s blame on both sides, repelling each other in the middle like magnets. Firstly, Stephens’ narrative feels more experimental and less intricately reflective than his others. There are devices within One Minute that feel unfinished when they are compared to those more well-rounded and plumped out in the majority of his other plays. They are present, though; the faces and places of a city all lost, all mindlessly searching for belonging: their link to society, their home. A missing child (eleven year old Daisy) is literally lost, a missing piece that dislocates the rest of the narrative and yet connects its characters. It’s by no means his most accomplished work. In Delirium’s blurb about the play they synopsise that it is about the inarticulacy of grief: but grief is actually a by-product of the play’s aims. The missing child illuminates how lost we all our as faceless strangers sharing a city. The five characters are linked together by the child’s disappearance, but become no more defined by that.

Delirium have created an overcomplicated set, the walls full of pictures, coffee cups and artefacts that are visually confusing and distracting. Whilst the central space is bare. The more Delirium simplify their action, fluidly manoeuvring through some twenty scenes, intelligently using props and movement to take us seamlessly on the journey, the more successful it is. The five performances are all strong; particularly Rose Riley’s manic Mary Louise. Stephens gives each of them intricate and visual speeches about the city that are so emphatic that it is impossible not to put yourself in that place and time with them, also lost and also directionless. This is where the Delirium and Stephens’ marriage thrives, in the honest and simple connection between good performance and good writing.

One Minute, on paper, is already disjointed, its staccato scenes fragmented and their coherence unsteady. So is the nature of Delirium’s work. But there needs to be a balance otherwise the story gets swallowed up and it’s substance spat out.

One Minute is playing at The Vaults until 3 October. For more information and tickets, see The Vaults website. Photo by Colin J Smith.