Renowned for experimentation, English playwright Caryl Churchill tests both theatre makers and theatre goers with a barely connected patchwork of more than 50 scenes and 100 characters.

The script of Love and Information, which was first performed in London in 2012, stipulates that the scenes can to some extent be performed in any order, including several “random” ones. It has few stage directions and no indictions about who is speaking.

More accomplished people than have gathered for Theatre Works’s new production would struggle to interpret this work in a way that satisfactorily conveys meaning or emotion.

Charlie Morris and Felix Star in Love and Information. Photo © Steven Mitchell Wright

How do you get an audience to care about characters they encounter for a few minutes – or mere seconds? Quite apart from the order, what is the tone for each scene? What is the context, bearing in mind staging limitations imposed by the unrelenting need for speed and adaptation?

Director Belle Hansen and the mostly fresh-faced cast certainly keep things moving fluently. However, at the end of nearly two hours (no interval) I was fatigued and unfulfilled, with only a handful of...