JOHN Godber’s first play for the new Hull Truck Theatre, Funny Turns, had too many actors, too many plot strands and not enough narrative cohesion.

By way of contrast, Beef is testimony to maximising the minimum. It began life as The Weed in 1998 and was pumped up by Godber with a second act for its re-emergence as Beef & Yorkshire Pudding at Wakefield in 2004.

Re-written once more, it has become Beef, still a one-man show about a body builder but now made of stronger stuff. Beef on steroids, you could say, complete with a warning that it “contains strong language and sexual references”.

To the strong stuff, you can add the dark stuff, and a hint of what may lie ahead if Godber were to jettison the jokes while retaining the anger and frustration that has always underscored his best writing.

Beef begins in familiar Godber territory: a comedic landscape where someone is looking to change his life for the better, in this case weakling Dave Cookson, the butt of the school bullies, who dreams of transforming his pigeon toes, narrow shoulders and sunken chest on a diet of pumping iron and heavy metal music.

Played by Nick Lane in its previous incarnations, Dave is now fleshed out further by the intense Matthew Booth, while Lane has assumed the director’s reins adeptly. The first half is aptly the weaker of the two, a tale of pathos and self-pity in a bobble hat, which gradually gains weight like the fantasising Dave will ultimately do amid the awkward yet easy laughs.

The laughter quickly freezes on the lips at the outset of the second half, once the audience has acclimatised to the sight of a shaven-headed Dave, by now a 17-stone gym junkie no longer recognised by anyone, least of all himself. Matter is winning out over mind, and humour is smashed to pulp on a barrier reef of devastating, graphic revelations of the night he did nothing to stop a gang bang.

Like Dave, Godber has developed a new power in Beef, and unlike Dave, it should not entrap him but release new possibilities, freeing him from relying on old strengths.

Beef, The Studio, Hull Truck Theatre, until May 23. Box office: 01482 325012.