THE stage is set for battle, with two chairs at either end of a central area, with the audience on both sides.

Award-winning writer Philip Ridley gives us two unnamed characters, Man and Woman, who meet in a garden at an Essex birthday party.

This new 85-minute duet is a modern take on Adam and Eve, with a nod to Perseus and Andromeda, which transforms into a seriously crazy sexual attraction. Ridley pits man and woman against each other where they inhabit a mutually imagined fantasy island.

Man’s idea of making love uses brutal measures of sexual jousting and bizarre goading that involve grenades and bullets and all manner of wicked taunts.

Tom Byam Shaw has the character and energy of a dark, twisted comic book hero that comes complete with drenching sweat and quenching word spit.

Lara Rossi’s woman is equal in the ritual combat zone of sexualised storytelling, hurling a massacre of words with an incredibly accurate aim. Both actors are superb word athletes with a built-in addictive watchable factor.

Rich, wordy descriptions of giant serpent attacks, unicorns, alien abductions, tsunami devastation and bands of helpful monkeys are thwarted by an underbelly of childlike vulnerability.

Tender moments include where they share the memory of a child they once were, or maybe it is a child they once shared. The questions of interpretation are subjective and there really are no easy answers.

Love it or loathe it, the production will stick in your memory.

• Tender Napalm plays in York Theatre Royal Studio on Thursday, June 7. Box office 01904-623568 and takeoverfestival.co.uk