THIS disturbing Lucy Prebble play has not been seen since its debut at the Royal Court 17 years ago.

Understandable, since the subject matter is so uncomfortable that any artistic director might baulk at putting it on, and credit is due to the Orange Tree for staging a revival. It deserves full houses every night.

While the play itself is electrifying, the acting from the outstanding cast of four generates its own static charge, creating an atmosphere that occasionally makes the hair stand on end.

Jessica Rhodes makes a sensational professional debut as Dani, a reckless 17-year-old with an eating disorder who makes contact via an internet chatroom with two men.

The 22-year-old Lewis (Ali Barouti) sees himself as her potential boyfriend but the considerably older Tim (John Hollingworth) turns out, as she suspects, to be a paedophile.

Meeting up with both suitors separately, Tim is the one she prefers to engage with and the pair begin to develop a desperate and seemingly supportive relationship, in which they try to explore ways of understanding and controlling each other’s destructive urges.

But it turns out that there are limits to how far they can progress and, in a raw and traumatic final scene, Dani is forced to understand that even though it’s easy to bury yourself in abstraction, there’s no hiding place from a brutal real world or personal responsibility.

In Rebecca Brower’s minimalist set, the subdued and soothing lights of the internet encase brighter, starker realities, from Jessica’s home-with-no-comforts to Tim’s ready-to-run flat with boxed possessions.

They convey the bleak and disappointing worlds that confront each character, including Dani’s worried mother (Alexandra Gilbreath), whose failing marriage underpins the action.

The protagonists are by turns innocent and worldly-wise, vulnerable and controlling or sensitive and manipulative, while sympathies switch from one to the other as events unfold.

In the end it’s tricky to decide who, if anyone, has a proper handle on the real world. Pinpointing the truth was difficult enough even in the dial-up internet world first portrayed by this play back in 2003. These days, of course, it's even harder.

Runs until February 22, box office: orangetreetheatre.co.uk