Danny and the Deep Blue Sea announced playwright John Patrick Shanley in 1983, when an Off-Broadway production earned a near-unknown John Turturro an Obie Award. Shanley would go on to write Moonstruck – which shares something of this play’s combustible romanticism – and Doubt: A Parable, soon to be revived by Sydney Theatre Company.

It hasn’t been staged in Sydney for at least a couple of decades. Like Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, it’s something of a period piece, harking back to a time when rawness and grit were prized commodities. For today’s intimacy co-ordinators, it’s a parade of red flags.

JK Kazzi and Jacqui Purvis in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. Photo © Tony Davison

A bar somewhere in the Bronx. A woman nurses the dregs of a beer. A young man storms in and drops into the next seat, knuckles bleeding, rage crackling off him like static. For a couple of minutes they barely acknowledge each other.

She is Roberta, 31, divorced, between jobs, living with her family, numbed by disappointment and haunted by something shameful.

He is Danny, 29 and convinced he won’t see 30. His hair-trigger temper has...