Slippery review – lust and longing are in the air, long after the party is over

History is supposed to stay, well, history. But in Louis Emmitt-Stern’s Tony Craze award-winning play, it tumbles face first into the present. Ten years ago, Jude (John McCrea) and Kyle (Perry Williams) were a couple who relished all things hedonistic, and partying into the early hours on a cocktail of drink and drugs. That was until they broke up and Kyle disappeared.

Now they find themselves together again in Jude’s Canary Wharf penthouse in the middle of the night, after he has a nasty fall and Kyle is unexpectedly called to the hospital as his emergency contact. Years have passed and their lives have diverged: Kyle has left behind the party lifestyle while Jude is in the early days of grief following the death of his partner, Sam. Both are working hard to keep up appearances. But as they talk, cook spaghetti carbonara and catch up on all that’s changed, their lies begin to crack open.

McCrea and Williams are beat-perfect as these exes, keenly aware of each other’s bad habits and pressure points yet still desperate to impress. Lust and longing hang thick in the air between them, charged with the weight of all that might have been. Quick-witted Jude shifts from grief-stricken to a magnetic, masterful seducer. Kyle appears calm and collected on the surface, but beneath it he is scrambling to keep everything on track. McCrea, in particular, is a wonder of a performer, dancing out his anger one second, and sitting small and wet-eyed the next.

Photograph: Ali Wright

Jude’s flat, designed by Hannah Schmidt, has all the style of a luxury suite. But with its vast windows – mirror-like in the night’s darkness – it feels more like a cage. Director Matthew Iliffe finds the natural pulse in Emmitt-Stern’s dialogue, and his production is fuelled by the intimacy of a past but not forgotten love.

The script’s constant revelations, though, wring it of any sense of realism, and the structure of shocks feels unnecessary in an otherwise well-written piece. It remains, however, a knotty dissection of the queer dating scene and of bereavement in many forms. And watching two exes hash it out is always compelling, isn’t it?