RTFM – it’s techie jargon for “read the [bleeping] manual” – is a show that grabs attention with a quirky concept, then builds it into something moving and wonderful. We’re met outside the theatre by a youngish couple, Olivia and David, awkwardly toting a ginormous flat-pack box through the door. The premise is that, with our help, they’ll build an IKEA wardrobe live on stage. And 50 minutes later, that is indeed what’s happened… but of course, there’s so much more to it than that.

The couple live, we discover, in a country at war: a place that once was safe and stable, yet now is enmeshed in brutal terror. Building the wardrobe is a kind of escape, a symbol of normality and of hope for the future, and a distraction – we sense – from some highly personal grief. The couple approach their task in very different ways: the headstrong David longs to numb his pain with action, while the nervy Olivia insists on studying every detail of the eponymous assembly manual.

We learn of the world outside through a series of eerie news reports, styled almost as beat poetry, set to music that has enough echoes of the BBC’s beeps and drums to suggest this might be happening very close at hand. In truth, the action isn’t fixed in a specific place or time, though one segment does allude to an aspect of a current conflict which maybe hasn’t attracted the compassion it deserves. Later, it seems the war might even be a metaphor – an acknowledgement that, while the pain of conflict is spread unevenly across the world, shock and despair find a home everywhere.

The immersive soundscape is a highlight overall, surrounding us – not with the fury of war – but with subtler cues that place us at the centre of the story. And we’re drawn in more literally, too, as we’re asked to hold this or that, or even to step onto the stage to help with the construction. These interactions are fun, sometimes downright hilarious, and the bickering between the couple is played for humour too; but there’s a fragility to the clowning, an understanding that uncontrollable sorrow lies just below the veneer.

Being picky, the audience interaction creates some dead time for those who aren’t involved in a particular scene, and one poignant sequence was stretched so far that the tension began to fray. But it all comes together in a truly beautiful conclusion: a gentle subversion of the rules as we’d understood them, and a surprising final interaction which it would be a crime to spoil. It feels absurd to say that something as mundane as building a wardrobe can evoke a message so profound, and yet, somehow, it’s true. RTFM’s only here for a week, so book your tickets ASAP.