Funny Guy traces the effects of love and ambition on two New York couples, as changing fortunes and betrayals play out across their relationships – forcing both them and us to confront their real motivations.

Dan and Emma seem outwardly successful. Dan is cool, laid-back, and looks like he spends plenty of time in the gym; he’s an alpha male who addresses everything in an elusive philosophical manner, even uttering the phrase “inchoate emotional dysphoria” at one point. In contrast, Bill is nerdy and happy to cruise along in his IT job, but his younger wife Margie thinks he should be earning more.

Margie’s promptings, and her complaints about Bill to her friend Emma, permeate through the friendship. At first, Emma was happy to go along with anything as long as her marriage seemed to be working, but now she develops a growing interest in what Dan earns – leading to a crisis of their own. We learn what happens to marriages and friendships when the evasions behind them come up against hard cash, success and failure.

Meanwhile, Dan encourages Bill in his new career as a stand-up comic, whose act is based around a pipe-cleaner puppet Dan gives him. This is the eponymous Funny Guy, who voices subconscious thoughts and motivations. The directness of Funny Guy’s observations is in stark contrast to Dan’s musings as the authoritative voice in the play.

When Funny Guy appears in his massive neon incarnation, it is a genuinely awesome moment. This fearsome truth-telling version of Bill’s puppet throws a different complexion on much that we have seen before. Unfortunately, there are two issues with Funny Guy’s appearance that undermine his impact. Firstly, the soundscape drone that accompanies him is meant to be intense, but is just too loud and deep, and genuinely physically uncomfortable. More importantly, though the actor operating him is excellent and delivers his lines superbly, I wish I couldn’t see his face – it distracts from the amazing marionette.

Funny Guy is an intense and thought-provoking play. It’s unusual in the UK to find a show that addresses work and money so directly, and while that approach is refreshing, there have to be reservations about a script where both the female characters are so motivated by what their husbands earn. One cliché may be unfortunate, but two seems careless, and it undermines what is otherwise an imaginative contemporary drama. That being said, in other respects Funny Guy is perceptive and sharp and will leave you pondering on some uncomfortable home truths long afterwards.