YOU enter down a dark, claustrophobic passage, your eyes adjusting to the acrid smoke, as you pass a silent, grim-faced goon in a beret. He is very definitely not tearing tickets or showing you to your seat through the murk.

You are instantly in a corridor of uncertainty, the feeling of intimidation only heightened by the Studio stage being compressed in Zoe Squire's design. It certainly lives up to the brochure's forewarning that the audience will be "thrust into the heart of the conflict" in the bold creative vision of Squire and director Hal Chambers, winners of the 2014 Young Angels Theatremakers Award.

Freelancers Squire and Chambers had first presented 25 minutes of Jacek Laskowski's translation of Ingmar Villqist's Polish play Helver's Night at York Theatre Royal's Theatre Cafe showcase of European theatre earlier this year, after doing their research and development at the University of York. They were duly picked by Company of Angels to present the full play's British premiere in an autumn run in the Studio.

There will be no escape from Helver's Night: it grabs you and grips you for 84 minutes straight through, the audience on edge and on top of the cramped stage. You sense too that there will be no escape for Carla (Kate Lynn Evans) and her young charge Helver (Adam Venus).

As a fretful Carla stirs her pan of potato soup, from beyond her flat's peeling wallpaper and rudimentary kitchen come the muffled sounds of violence on the streets, as an occupying army rampages through an unspecified town. Fascism is on the rise, and Helver bursts through the door in the excitement, the bravura rush, of being part of the rampage, still waving his flag and shouting through the window.

Helver appears over-excited, a hurricane of words, like a child coming home from school desperate to tell his mother a story of how the day went. Soon it becomes clear that he is an innocent, maybe autistic, a "simpleton", as Carla calls him when he pushes her too much, both physically and mentally, in his enthusiasm to teach her the rudiments of military drill. She can only protect him so far. All the while, all around, the violence is erupting (the sounds provided by ensemble members Paul Mason and Julie McIsaac).

There are shades of a classic Greek tragedy in Villqist's play, especially in the psychological aspect of the human drama and although it is effectively a two-hander, it feels bigger than that in its universality in depicting individual struggles within a wider conflict.

Its finale also puts you in mind of the closing scene of another European play, Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, with its pills and an ailing young man, although here he is a lamb amid other slaughters.

If you have never seen a Polish play, Venus and Evans's austere yet moving performances demand that Helver's Night should be your night too.

  •  A post-show discussion with the cast and director will take place after tomorrow's 7.45pm performance.

Helver's Night, Company of Angels/York Theatre Royal, York Theatre Royal Studio, until Saturday, 7.45pm, plus 2.30pm, Thursday , and 2pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk