KNEEHIGH have done it again.

Not only have the Cornish company revived Emma Rice’s hit that first played the Playhouse in 2005 but the 2013 vintage of Tristan & Yseult is even better.

This is a play for those who understand that the answer to the question “What is love?” is “the euphoria of impossibility” or for those who sag knowingly when Rice asks, “Where does all the wasted love go”.

Tristan & Yseult is Kneehigh’s riff on the operatic love story of Tristan and Isolde, but what it marks it out is that it places a chorus at the centre as our nerdy guides. They are The Unloved, a band of love spotters and kiss-clockers who “look on in life, who are not chosen to play the starring role”, as director-adaptor Rice says in her programme note.

Dressed in trainspotter anoraks and balaclavas, carrying notebooks, peering through thick spectacles and speaking in a John Major monotone, they oversee Rice’s “tender unravelling of love in all its beautiful and painful forms”.

And we have all been there, felt that pain and share it here in Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy’s heart-pounding script as the arranged marriage of Yseult (Patrycja Kujawska) to Cornish King Mark (Mike Shepherd) rips asunder her love for Tristan (Tristan Sturrock).

Live music (romantic covers of Bob Marley, Joe Jackson etc, with fabulous vocals by Carly Bawden’s Whitehands in particular) and acrobatics by Giles King’s unctuous Frocin, plus brilliant, breathtaking use of Bill Mitchell’s stage design, play their exhilarating part but above all you will love The Unloved.

Tristan & Yseult, Kneehigh, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, today at 1.30pm and 7.30pm; tomorrow, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2pm, 7.30pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk