Set aboard a small boat plying the seas between the ancient kingdoms of Cornwall and Ireland, German-Argentinian playwright Esther Vilar’s drama spins around the chivalric romance of Tristan and Isolde/Iseult and turns it into a provocative, spikily playful drama of colonisation, consent and resistance.

Emma Wright in Isolde & Tristan. Photo © Kate Williams

Isolde (Emma Wright), daughter of the Irish Queen, is being transported across the waters by Tristan (Tom Wilson) in order to marry Tristan’s elderly uncle, King Marke (Sean O’Shea). Their union will cement peace between warring nations – though entirely on Marke’s terms, it seems.

Tristan appears the ideal candidate to act as ferryman. He’s young and fanciable, but it was he who lopped off the head of Isolde’s betrothed, the Irish warrior Morold. So it’s hardly likely that the still-grieving Princess (whom Marke has heard is plain in the extreme) will succumb to the charms of the man who killed her lover. Less likely still that the obedient young knight will cuckold the man from whom he will eventually inherit a kingdom.

But confined aboard a tiny boat, under starlit skies and fortified by Irish whiskey …...