The title’s an homage to Sartre, of course: “Hell is other people”. It’s the kind of highbrow reference this play’s protagonists would wheel out, and want you to notice they’d deployed. We find ourselves at budding actress Margo’s 22nd birthday party, which doubles as a reunion – and perhaps a farewell – as four young people prepare to move on from student life. There’s sexual candour, shocking humour and juvenile games; it’s all good fun on the surface, but they know each other well enough to be wickedly hurtful too.

The perpetually smug Nick was a reviewer for the student newspaper; he thinks his critique was candid and biting, but (in my professional opinion) it was actually purest hack. He’s been persona non grata since he turned his bile on Margo, who, along with best friend Liv, made theatre the defining aspect of her student years. There’s a much more commonplace source of drama, too: everybody’s had it off with everybody else, and everybody present knows it. But there are real secrets as well, dangerous ones, which we see whispered in hurried asides as pairs of characters snatch quiet moments together.

Most of the show’s a drunken party game, a variant of Truth Or Dare which we sense the group have developed over many nights and years. The games are infantile, but they’re meant to be that way, and the cast portray their loosening inhibitions very well. A few secrets are volunteered aloud, but if you watch keenly you’ll learn much more from the choices made and the things unsaid. Boozy parties aren’t my scene – but I got into it despite myself.

Perhaps most interesting is the group’s subtle exclusion of the relative newcomer James, who’s a likeable and intelligent man, but not as self-consciously arty as the student frenemies are. As the game plays out, the little signals pile up, and we begin to wonder if everyone truly welcomes him here. He doesn’t speak the old friends’ language of equivocal praise and cruel belittlement – yet his drunken tribute to Margo is among the script’s most ironically eloquent passages.

But we know that this won’t be, can’t be, the end of the story. There are just too many portents, and too many tensions unresolved. For me, the late twist is too telegraphed to be truly shocking, but too gothic to feel a credible consequence of what’s come before. And if I dare to tell the truth myself, I didn’t fully understand it; there’s a flashback scene that I think is meant to explain what’s happened, but there are important details I’m still left guessing at.

Other People is a convincing portrayal of a group with shared history, and an entertaining if sometimes cringe-inducing reminder of the intensity of student days. The dramatic final turn’s a touch less satisfying than the character studies that precede it, but the thesis in the title is sound. Hell is other people – and it’s those who know you best who carry the sharpest pitchforks.