There is no missing the alienated strangeness and accelerating sense of despair, the anarchic defiance and moral vacuity that characterises this modern black comedy.

What a grim message its famous young author, the sensation-causing Dorota Maslowska sends from Poland, or at least from an impoverished, rebellious youth sector that rejects the Catholic church and drowns its ample sorrows in the famous trinity of sex, drugs and alcohol, with a bit of glue sniffing on the side. When these addictions come into their own, violence does not follow far behind.

In form, this is a road movie drama which drifts towards a shocking destination. Maslowska writes with foul-mouthed exuberance and surreal zest, her script translated in the right, rough style by Lisa Goldman and Paul Sirett.

The two main characters, Dzina, presumably a tart and Parcha, perhaps a male soap opera star, are Romanians, an identity that is here more a state of disturbed mind than an actual country. It's no surprise that they lose their Polish intonation and come to sound like East End Londoners.

This duo, the nature of whose attachment never becomes clear, drive themselves to stoned confusion and near breakdown as they travel through a bleak Poland, forcing their way into cars and other people's lives.

It turns out that Miss Maslowska's text reads far more interestingly than it is played, thanks to the heavy-handed direction of Soho's adventurous artistic director, Lisa Goldman.

The production is pitched at a bawling, helter-skelter extremity of caricature that prevents you from recognising Dzina and Parcha as drugged life casualties.

They are presented as almost comic-strip turns, whether forcing their way into a middle-aged driver's car and accidentally leaving him with loads of banknotes, or cruising along with Ishia Bennison's fine,vodka-slugging, car-crashing lady drunk.

It is this latter scene that best captures the play's nightmare madnessand the self-destructive fanaticism of its anti-heroes.

Miriam Buether's set, with its golf buggie as a car and a stony, black floor would have been more effective, if it had dispensed with realism altogether.

Andrea Riseborough's Dzina, with her phantom pregnancy, unfortunate teeth and drug-ridden remoteness succumbs impressively to physical and emotional disintegration, but she and Andrew Tiernan's far too coarse-grained Parcha are so over-projected that the potential of this strangely compelling play is best realised by reading it.

• Until 29 March. Information: 0870 429 6883, www.sohotheatre.com