THIS is a play about terrorism with a small ‘t’, terrorism before 9/11.

Or, as Young Actors Company director Julian Ollive defines it, this is the terrorism that occurs in everyday situations, not necessarily violent or political, but in the small acts of sin, revenge, greed, envy and misunderstanding.

Come the end of these six interlinking vignettes by the Russian Presnyakov Brothers, translated for the Royal Court Theatre by Sasha Dugdale, you could add adultery, rape, bullying at work, and suicide too, as the play posits the argument that “in this town everyone is a terrorist and everyone is a victim of terrorism”.

There are explosions in Terrorism, but of the gas variety, and there is a bomb alert too at an airport, but equally there are little bombs going off in the heads of assorted characters played by Ollive’s company of 18 to 25-year-olds.

What links each vignette is the over-riding sense of living with fear, a state heightened of course since 9/11, but here shown to be rampant in domestic situations too; each cause, no matter how small, leading to a greater effect.

Ollive’s production successfully captures the play’s blurred margin between extreme reality and the theatre of the absurd, and so too does Lydia Denno’s design. Floor-to-ceiling breezeblocks turn out to contain drawers, stools, and stockings for tying up a lover: a shape-shifting symbol of how you cannot trust what you see on the surface.

A bed emerging from the wall like a lowered drawbridge is a particular coup de theatre for the designer, one of the humorous touches that dissipate as a bitter darkness takes over.

The blend of realism and absurdity is best encapsulated in the cast reconstructing the breezeblock edifice, block by block to the accompaniment of repetitive screeching, before the lights finally go up to signify the audience may leave for the interval.

Throughout, Ed Sunman’s sound designs play a key role too, sometimes musical, but often extraneous street noise that accumulatively annoys: sound functioning as a Greek chorus, if that doesn’t sound too pretentious.

A few frustrations, however, blight this show. Sasha Dugdale’s dialogue will not live long in the memory; characters are not always well delineated from scene to scene; and unexpectedly too much of the acting falls short of the heights hit by Rebecca Beattie, or indeed short of the standard set by the Young Actors company in Equus last year.

Terrorism, York Theatre Royal Young Actors Company, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, tonight and tomorrow at 7.45pm. Box office: 01904 623568.