In the 1380s Geoffrey Chaucer commenced his magnum opus The Canterbury Tales with a group of pilgrims telling stories on the road from The Tabard Inn at Southwark to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. Their journey and their devotions to the canonised Archbishop are intended to make their passage to heaven that bit easier - hopefully salvation will be their reward.

Six hundred years later the residents of Jim Cartwright's Road undertake pilgrimage only as far as the local pubs and chip shop and salvation seems a very long way off, although some of them may be heading out of this world quite quickly. Just like the storytellers in Boccaccio's Decameron (which was an inspiration for Chaucer) who were pursued by the plague, they are stuck in one place hoping for an improvement.Depressingly it seems that the recession of the plague is more likely than the end of the recession. Unlike Chaucer's pilgrims they don't get any further than the end of their road and it isn't clear that any of them even want to.

As in Cartwright's play Two the actors have multiple roles but fortunately we have an expert local narrator. In a performance that lead the action without looming over it (as you can imagine it could), Dickon Farmar's Scullery is out on his own as our tour guide and Chaucer-like narrator. He seems to be having a whale of a time, constantly on the scrounge for booze, "girlies" and stories to entertain us with. He doesn't exactly sell the local area to us though : "There's the town, there's this road and then there's the slag heap" and his unrosy view seems to be shared by the others who come along. Lane muses that "It's like a long pissie trough to me" and although "there's nowt, sometimes it's sloppy, but we keep snoggin through" it seems like the bravado of desperation. The Professor doesn't even have the excuse of being born and getting stuck there, as he chose to do "an anthropological story of Road" when he got made redundant. Having lost his wife, his children and "half me stomach" things don't seem to be going very well for him. If that doesn't seem depressing enough Joey and Clare have taken to their bed and appear for all the world to be resigned to dying there. At least John and Yoko's bed protest was trying for world peace, this one seems to be nihilistic and pointless if oddly moving by virtue of Clare's dreamy declarations of affection for her man: "Perhaps if I cried you could drink up my tears".

If this makes Road sound like a dour, downbeat play then nothing could be further from the truth. It is a visceral, lively, in-your-face expression of frustration and bewilderment with more than a few touches of humour, even if it is often laughter in the dark. Although Cartwright's treatment of his characters could sometimes be seen as patronising and caricatured he clearly loves them all and just wishes things could be better for them.

And there are plenty of laughs to be had out of the situations. A lot of it comes from Sue Brodie's roles ; as Helen wondering what she should do with her very drunken soldier, as Molly the reminiscing old woman who seems almost Dickensian in her eccentric whimsyness and as Marion trapped in a manic falling out of love/lust chase with Brian which also involves Scullery and a shopping trolley at one point. Jude Chalk's magnificent rubbish strewn multi level set (including a much talked about skip) enabled a memorable physical chase between Marion and Brian which was one of the highlights of the evening. Their chase was indicative of the more communal, visceral tone of the second half where the evening is drawing to a close all over Road and the desperation to make some personal human contact becomes both more frantic and more woozy due to the tide of alcohol. The closing party - if that's the word - involving Brink, Eddie, Carol and Louise is indicative of the state of human relations on Road as Cartwright sees them ; everyone wants to be with someone but they all want to be left alone at the same time and it is mainly their inertia that decides them to stay rather than any burning passion.

It would be perfectly fair to say that the multiple roles for all the actors sows a certain amount of confusion and you do just have to go with the flow at various times rather than try to hang on to who everybody is and what exactly it is they are up to. Emily Grimson had a particularly hard task in this respect as her portfolio included the much younger character of Linda, but she carried off all her roles with a convincing degree of authenticity. Clare Joseph was mostly her partner in crime for the evening, the more assertive, sarcastic, provocative half of the duo's taunting potential partners and the audience in equal measure, although her Valerie character seems a bit of a misstep by the author as she seems a bit isolated in the crowded and frenetic proceedings. Her Carol, in contrast had a bold facade with a sudden vulnerability that was very well done. I particularly enjoyed Tom Redican's turns as the aggressive Brother and Bald, the latter appearing with Sue Brodie's Mrs Bald from the middle of the back wall like some sort of real live Punch and Judy show complete with odd dialogue and a disregard for the more lively residents which eventually backfired on him. Richard Pedersen had three fine turns as the Professor, Jerry and Brian who, unreasonably drunk though he was, sticks in the memory as a clear favourite. Chris Sherwood had the aggressive skin lad whose idea of a good time is to beat the hell out of several strangers and the contrasting and almost insensible figure of the Soldier whose thankless highlight was to throw up on himself and then be manhandled by sex mad older woman. We've all had worse evenings I suppose. I liked his Eddie most of all when he lead the closing foursome in an almost primal chant of frustration.

This isn't a play for everyone and at thirty years old plus it has that unusual distinction of being a work that might even shock a bit more than it did on its debut, but nobody can doubt the power and ingenuity of its language, and the strength of the acting company on this occasion helped you to ignore some of its rougher edges. Dan Usztan's judicious cutting of the text and imaginative direction kept the vital feel of the play going for most of the time except where the text itself inevitably held it back. Adam Taylor's took us from early evening to early morning and spotlighted the individual turns well. Lily Ann Coleman's costumes reminded me of the 80s (particularly the ra ra skirts and Joy Division t-shirt) and combined with Rob Ellis's excellent soundtrack took us back to the era without ever signposting things too obviously. Whether Cartwright's Road will last as long as Chaucer or Boccaccio is impossible to say but I suspect his rough, realistic vision will be with us for a while yet.