I’m often drawn to starting my blog with a pithy or whimsical anecdote.

Not so, this time.

I feel inclined to do away with the preamble, the “how does this relate to me”s, the “int Manchester/theatre/art/food/drink (delete as appropriate) great”s of it all.

Three couples. Thirty years. Mothers and daughters. Lovers, partners, husbands and wives. Babies, teenagers, birthdays, holidays, honeymoons, fireworks, near-misses, rain. This is a play about all of it. The smallest tremble. A smashed glass. The ripping apart of space and time. An explosion.

Shed: Exploded View, is an original play written by Phoebe Eclair-Powell, directed by the award-winning Atri Banerjee.

We see Frank and Naomi (Jason Hughes and Lizzy Watts), their daughter Abi and partner Mark (Norah Lopez Holden and Michael Workeye) and Tony and Lil (Wil Johnson and Hayley Carmichael).

And we once again see the unique and beautiful space that is The Royal Exchange theatre serving as the unofficial, uncredited additional and integral member of the production.

I will return to this later.

This powerful production plays with time and space, in an abstract story of three couples, affected by abuse. Emotional, physical, and each trapped within both inner and external torment.

Overlap is a strong feature of this play. A device used in the narrative and in the practical execution of the performances. The parallels of the couples’ lives are in the actual (Frank and Naomi embarking on their respective first honeymoons in the Maldives, meeting the older Tony and Lil (his third, her second), immediately giving us a front seat view of their contrasting relationships. Naomi nervous, apologetic to her new husband, Frank unforgiving, cutting…Tony and Lil teasing, loving, jostling…in tune and in love. But seemingly so are Frank and Naomi. In ‘love’, but rarely in tune.

The red flags are hung out in front of us and the uneasy feelings firmly planted in our minds and stomachs from the get go. Tony and Lil – when will the other shoe drop…

And we have Abi, who we come to realise is Frank and Naomi’s daughter, introduced at a point in time where she’s a fresher, in her less than ‘meet-cute’ with Mark, as she throws up in his uni bedroom at a house party. He’s sweet, he helps her, he listens to her, he…takes immediate advantage of her drunken state in a problematic scenario of her inviting him to take her virginity, he immediately accepting.

As we’re taken through 30 years of each couple’s relationship, the non-linear nature of the story is aided and abetted by a screen flashing up the year, as we rapidly jump from 1994 until eventually 2024, and in and out of all the years in between.

As an audience member and all-round anxious human being, at first panic descended as the screen and story jumped around the various years, back and forth, round and round and I became obsessed with committing each interaction to each respective year and memory, and ‘would I miss a year change and become terribly confused and have to leave for a lie down’.

No, because the production didn’t allow that and kept us tethered. With each troubling and dramatic set of scenes played out – repetition of dialogue, overlapping of lines, chalked out words on the stage, time stamping the different moments in the couples’ lives ‘mum mum mum’, ‘honeymoon’, ‘hit me baby one more time’, ‘little sips’, ‘eat something’ and, an important, ‘not all men’, all devices work together to flesh out the story, our understanding and eventually dark realisations as all stories collide to reveal one ultimate (among many along the way) shocking truth to the audience.

Let’s talk about that stage, for the moment. I’ve seen it used in a number of innovative, wild and wonderful ways in previous Royal Exchange productions, and this proved no different.

With three rotating, concentric sections to the circular stage, each was used to position characters, to act as the aforementioned chalk boards, with the audience introduced to various elements and view points at slightly different moments, and our understanding of what was being presented to us slowly layering over time. The choreography of each cast member entering, leaving, reentering is beautifully considered, and creates the clever feeling of an uninterrupted and natural flow to a purposely jumbled but effective timeline and narrative.

But I guess my account of Shed: Exploded View needs to step away from the abstract in order to provide clarity to those who are yet to witness it for themselves.

Let us then be clear and get back to basics. The themes here are abuse. Domestic abuse, violence, gaslighting, date-rape, cruelty, motherhood, post-natal depression, cancer, dementia, assisted suicide, escape, imprisonment, eating disorders, adultery…

It’s a story of foreshadowing, experience, regret, shame, love and marriage. And so very powerfully executed.

It’s a no-holds barred story and warning of the human psyche and behaviours, and a worrying tale of life and actions repeating itself without either insight or intervention, incredibly acted and produced. And the shed? I interpret this to stand for secrets, a place to hide from the world, pent up despair, imprisonment and but also short term escape. Until it’s suddenly not.

(And if that differs from the official intent, I guess that’s ok as art is there for self-interpretation and applied understanding. There is no right or wrong.)

And in that vein, if my blog post has offered little in the way of stone-cold plot explanations and description, that’s because it’s best experienced for oneself. Which you absolutely should.

A Royal Exchange Theatre production, Shed: Exploded View runs until Saturday 2 March.

Tickets and details can be found at https://www.royalexchange.co.uk/event/shed-exploded-view/