A silence has fallen upon the room. It is not a casual one, the kind you would encounter in a waiting room – the people watching the actors in the centre of the floor sense that something is taking place, something that demands our full attention. I am distantly aware of the air conditioning softly humming. There is a stillness in my bones. Connor Dumbrell, playing the part of Carl Jackson, releases an explosion of emotion that rises from a bottomless well of stinging edges: “Put your hands up to me and I’ll shoot you bandy. Good and dead. I’ll fly my flag.” Breath in. Breath out. It is not going to get easier.

Britannia Waves the Rules, written by Gareth Farr, enables the audience to dive in the mind of its protagonist Carl Jackson. We witness people and events visit the man’s thoughts, framed by the poetic language of his mental disposition. Because of this structure Carl is also never absent from the stage. While the role evidently requires a tremendous amount of focus, Dumbrell maintains his concentration through all the shifting and shuffling of a rehearsal environment. Filled to the brim with both violent physical energy and terrible fragility, his character struggles with the feeling of not belonging. So he runs.

This is the aspect that prompted the interpretation of the director Isabelle Higgins. It all started with the line “job is a wage and wage is cage”. “This feeling of Carl being trapped”, she explains, “I felt that it was a much bigger commentary on him being trapped by the social class he is in”. For her the play is first and foremost a narrative of a society failing its members. Blackpool, where Carl is raised, is presented as a wasteland of human destinies. Behind the candy-floss and neon lights thrives a completely different system of people left to their own devices. Constantly escaping this, Carl struggles against the resistance of his class. Yet it is made painfully evident that this is as futile as trying to run away from the bungee cord he is attached to. Leaving Blackpool by joining the army only leaves him alone with new losses. This is the notion Dumbrell uses as the basis for his portrayal of Carl: “He is always searching for someone to love, someone to support him. So for me it’s about what happens when you don’t get enough support”.

In comparison with Carl’s physical efforts, the uncomfortable passivity of the audience reflects its appointed role as the wider community. Zooming in rather than letting anyone stay safely distant, the play strives to give a name to the anonymous. Carl is a person we have all failed. Higgins’s direction of Britannia Waves the Rules is a wound that runs deeper than Carl’s physical or psychological reality. It touches a nerve profoundly dislocated in our society, demanding a response through the exceptional emotional intensity of the actors. In the end, the spectator is left trying to swallow their heart back to its place.

Britannia Waves the Rules is on from Tuesday 15th November to Saturday 19th November at Corpus Playroom