Was growing up with her father’s bipolar disorder a reason why Amy Liptrot craved rollercoaster extremes as an adult? It’s something the Orcadian author ponders in The Outrun, her 2016 memoir of addiction and recovery. Stef Smith’s visceral adaptation begins with Dad being hospitalised following his daughter’s premature birth. Liptrot’s central character, renamed Woman, is carried confidently by Isis Hainsworth with a gritty, glittery blur of ebullience, anger and vulnerability. We ride like ‘a gull on the gusts’ through her clubbing days in London, where alcohol becomes more important than relationships and an enamoured boyfriend has to retreat while a self-destructive whirlpool sucks her under.  

Lizzie Powell and Lewis den Hertog’s lighting and video design shapeshift between drunken blackout seizures, tranquil island rock pools and the dancing Northern Lights, finding new ways to plumb the sensory, near-psychedelic depths of Liptrot’s writing, which made the original book so rich. Liptrot’s passion for cold-water swimming, which became a clean buzz to replace the adrenaline rush of binge drinking, and a vital part of her creative-writing process, only gets a couple of lines, weighting the storytelling towards the struggle rather than that new addictive source of gratification.

When the temptations of birthday fizz or Christmas mulled wine threaten to take her back to a dark time, and sobriety seems boring to the point of being poisonous, Orkney’s wildness, and the grounding, cyclical comforts of lambing and corncrake nesting steady her again. Alison Fitzjohn plays Person, a fellow addict in group therapy that reminds Woman just how easy it is to relapse, and how resolute Woman really is. 

The Outrun, Church Hill Theatre, until 24 August, times vary.