Lost Atoms at Lyric Hammersmith review: fresh, flawed characters anchor this dynamic romance

Recounting their relationship is a slippery slope for the two characters in Anna Jordan’s engrossing play about love and loss. Figuratively and literally so: actors Hannah Sinclair Robinson and Joe Layton spend part of the time precariously embracing on a mattress-sized platform cantilevered downwards at 45 degrees from a wall of file drawers. They’re also required to scramble up and across the suddenly jutting stepping stones of the drawers, delving inside to unpack their past, and to arrange two boxy armchairs into a bed, a restaurant booth, a car…

Such strenuous exertions are standard practice for director Scott Graham’s touring company Frantic Assembly, now in their 32nd year and with recent athletic adaptations of Othello and Metamorphosis to their name. Here physicality is paired with a contemporary, empathic wit and sensitivity, which stops a potentially mawkish story from ever becoming too saccharine. An accomplished playwright, Jordan was also a writer on Succession, Killing Eve and One Day.