If Bella Baird’s opening monologue seems very rapidly delivered, an explanation for that is coming soon. This mysterious thriller, written by Adam Rapp, follows Baird (played by Madeleine Potter), a 53-year-old writing professor at Yale, and her unlikely, intense relationship with obnoxious first-year student Christopher Dunn (Eric Sirakian). The play is peppered with literary nods: works by David Foster Wallace, Sylvia Plath, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Joyce Carol Oates all get mentions; Baird leads exercises in automatic writing; Twitter seems a good place for flash fiction etc. 

Rapp knows that his intertextuality is a postmodern device: he repeatedly tells us what he’s doing. The urgent, brittle manner of Baird’s storytelling is because this particular story requires ‘velocity of thought’, we learn. These sidenotes remind us of the puppet master behind all this, wrongfooting us, keeping us in suspense, delivering on the tension he promises. There’s a hilarious sex scene to lighten the mood too. A satisfyingly smart and dark tale.

The Sound Inside, Traverse Theatre, until 25 August, times vary; main picture: Mihaela Bodlovic.