You may have seen plays about plays (The Seagull, or even Noises Off). And you may have seen a play within a play (A Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Critic). But you have never seen anything quite like The Writer by Ella Hickson. This is a play after a play; a play outside a play; and ultimately a play before which the audience loses the ability to determine what a play is at all. Real, fictional, metafictional, or real within the fictional world of the play itself - nothing is what it seems, and everything means something.

For a dazzling firework display of theatrical techniques and trompes l’oeil, The Writer has an almost touchingly simple and heartfelt message at its heart: ‘Dismantle capitalism and overturn the patriarchy’. Five scenes in the life of a young playwright follow her from innocent newcomer at the mercy of a domineering and sexually exploitative director to a life of success and stability with her partner. Along the way, like creative writers from time immemorial, she fights to maintain her artistic integrity against a never-ending barrage of commercialism.

What makes this play really special, mind-blowing in fact, is the way it plays havoc with traditional notions of narrative progression. In the opening scene, a young woman (the playwright, we assume) encounters and argues passionately with a director she meets in an empty theatre. Initial hesitancy balloons into heart-rending revelations in ten minutes. And just when the audience is completely invested in these characters… they stop acting. They are, it turns out, merely actors workshopping a scene by the actual playwright, and they proceed to discuss it with that very writer and the director of the scene, as well as the actual audience, which contains planted actors who ask the questions that are in Hickson’s script. As if this weren’t spiralling reality enough, it quickly becomes apparent that the director and writer may well be the real-life equivalents of the fictional ones that have enacted the very scene we’ve just watched.

Confused? You’re meant to be. But don’t worry. It all makes sense in the end.

In the next scene, the character we now know to be the ‘real’ writer is at home with her male partner. They have dinner, have sex, discuss careers, argue, propose marriage. It’s a busy evening. (And when the cassoulet hits the keyboard there’s an audible gasp from the audience. I sincerely hope that’s a prop laptop.) But from time to time the Director of the previous scene hovers at the side of the stage, suggesting that this scene too is merely a staging. Later, the Director argues with the Writer about the very play we are watching, telling her that the first scene was the best, and she needs to finish it off in similar style. Only in the final scene do we meet the writer’s true partner – and perhaps not even then. That final scene may be no more than the Writer giving in to the Director’s demands. Are we watching the conclusion the Writer always intended, or a sell-out to the boss? There’s no way of knowing.

The metatheatricality of the whole experience is both puzzling and fascinating. It builds to a picture of an artist who places herself inside her own story in an attempt to make sense of her life by fictionalising and dramatizing it. This is, as the title suggests, about being A Writer, about how much of your own experience you put into your writing, and about how you can get lost in the morass of reality and fiction you create about your own life.

But it’s also funny and beautiful. The script snaps between acerbic wit and lyrical poetry. In one surreal scene the characters recite a shared monologue depicting a dreamlike feminist vision of a utopian existence while the assistant stage managers, who until that point had been quietly and efficiently changing the scenery, burst into wild, orgiastic dance.

When The Writer opened at the Almeida in 2018, audiences were polarised. At the Pilch last night they were poleaxed. This is student theatre at its finest. Unlike the Almeida production, there are no men in this cast. Rose Martin, Gabriella Ofo, Susie Weidmann, Christiana Hutchings, and dancers Tiggy Jones and Emily Henson cover all the parts, male and female. And on this occasion the effect goes beyond mere gender-blind casting. There are times when we simply can’t be sure if a character is meant to be male or female, and director Joshua Robey deliberately teases us with that uncertainty, forcing us to question the impact of gender on role. The power of the patriarchy is subtler and more complex when you’re not sure who the patriarchy is.

The acting in this play is some of, if not the, best I have ever seen in an Oxford production. Timing, intensity, the ability to listen and play off each other, to control a scene even as it’s being performed – these are advanced skills, and the cast is so accomplished that every word is gripping and pregnant with meaning. Weidmann’s laconic wit and supreme performative self-assurance mark out a star of tomorrow, as does Martin’s depth and poise. Honestly, I was knocked out.

On top of all that, the intimacy directors Lex Kaby and Hope Thain deserve a special mention here. Back in the 80s Oxford students were constantly ripping all their clothes off and running around the theatre naked. But sex and physical intimacy has become harder and harder to depict on a student stage. This production shows that it can be done with maturity, believability, confidence and humour, and that in itself is an impressive step forward.

The Writer could so easily have fallen flat on its face. It’s complicated, subtle, full of tiny hints that need to be seen but not overexposed. And its theme of creative failure is almost like a death-wish on the show itself. But Robey has fashioned a perfect, intricate puzzle out of Hickson’s script, like a Japanese cluebox: delicate, beautiful to behold and, in the right hands, ready to pour forth its secrets.