Inexperience review: a 'no-contact' romance that is incredibly touching

Douglas Maxwell's new play Inexperience, now showing at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, is built on a clever conceit: two students meet at a 21st birthday party in 1995 and agree to maintain their sexual tension by never touching. If they ever do, the relationship ends.

The story unfolds in two eras, with two sets of actors. Robin Chilton – played as a young man by Alexander Tait and later by Sandy Grierson – stays true to the pact, evolving from an awkward student into an ascetic chief sheriff officer who lives solely for work. Iris Rossi – young Sophie Fortune, older Adura Onashile – forgets the arrangement entirely, becoming an endearingly chaotic art writer whose involvement with a paint-throwing climate campaign lands her in Robin's courtroom.

Maxwell uses the no-touch rule to pose philosophical questions: Is deferred gratification better than impulsive abandon? Is self-denial safer than surrendering to instinct? Or are mistakes essential to life? As Iris puts it, without experience there is no wisdom.

On stage, the concept creates a theatrical game. In Sally Reid's excellently acted production, with movement direction by Vicki Manderson, the actors weave around Jessica Worrall's elegant set with cat-and-mouse precision, coming within a whisker but never touching – until they inevitably do, providing an irrefutable answer that makes hearts swell.

Writing with a keen sense of narrative structure, Maxwell wittily dramatises generational divides as the younger actors play a series of characters trying and failing to keep the adults on track. The result is funny, moving and messily human.