Road begins with the crescendo of Judy Garland’s enduring song of hope and desperation: “birds fly over the rainbow, why then oh why can’t I.” This sense of escapism and desire for a better life predominates throughout Jim Cartwright’s gritty yet lyrical portrait of economic hardship.

Set in Lancashire at the height of Thatcher’s Britain, Road gives us an insight into the lives of the residents of an undefined road over the course of one night. It debuted at the Royal Court in 1986 to great acclaim. Bringing it back now to austerity Britain is an unusual move for a theatre that celebrates new writing and rarely revives plays. But it works. If you look beyond the shoulder pads, elaborate hairstyles and 80s hits, the depth of disenchantment resonates today. In fact director John Tiffany (of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child fame) cites this stagnancy as a key driver for the revival “It was written from a place where it didn’t feel like it could get any worse…and actually it’s got worse for people.”

But for all the frank despair – “fucking long life in’it” is a common refrain – the lyricism of the writing and the pervasive music conflate to affirm a latent sense of hope and striving for better – not accepting that this is ‘it’. In one particularly potent moment, the drunken narrator Scullery (Lemn Sissay) takes a shopping trolley as his dancing partner to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Although the 80s dance routines between scenes sometimes lacked crescendo, music is used skillfully throughout the play, bringing a sense of denouement at the end of the piece. A cringingly awkward drunken double-date was revolutionized by the playing of the entirety of Otis Redding’s ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ as though this was all that was needed to lessen the burden of trying times.

Chloe Lamford’s design adds to this sense of isolation in the characters’ lives – they are delivered up through the floor to tell their story in a grungy glass box; a display-case prison acting as an echo chamber for their thoughts. Sometimes moments of overly chummy audience interaction detract from this voyeuristic feeling. The original production’s promenade format would have lent itself better to this attempt at interactive theatre but as it stands I would have preferred that the seclusion be maintained.

Faye Marsay and Shane Zaza are convincing and arresting as Joey and Clare – a couple on a suicidal hunger strike, portraying the innate human desire for more than “work, work, small wages, Death”. They emphatically admonish our trepidation in confronting this: being “frightened to sniff the wind for fear it’ll blow your brain upside down.” The detail of Mark Hadfield’s performance is captivating in his portrayal of a lonely man evoking his earlier life when there “were so many jobs”. Game of Thrones’ fans will be unsurprised by Michelle Fairley’s incredible abilities, showcased best through her tragic portrait of Brenda, the withered alcoholic scrounging for a pound from her daughter and the poignantly hilarious Helen seducing a paralytic soldier who proceeds to unceremoniously vomit into a plate of chips.

Road is an outstanding fusion of excellent poetry, movement and humour which, together, offer a portrait of life beset by escapism and economic difficulty. If the transitions between vignettes seem clunky at times this can be primarily put down to their juxtaposition with the depth of emotion conveyed as each individual character tells their story. It is a formidable play which sharply portrays the struggles of ordinary people as accurately now as it did when it was first written. I can only hope that its bleak relevance diminishes over time.

Road, Royal Court, London, until 19 September.

According to Andrew Lloyd Webber, musical theatre is losing its momentum in the UK, but STOP could just be about to buck that trend. The recently-graduated duo of Annabel Mutale Reed (book and lyrics) and Leo Munby (music) has found an impressive sweet spot by writing a concept musical that deals with one of the most pressing and universal issues of our time: a crisis of mental illness.

Waiting together at a magical bus stop, a lawyer, personal trainer, dancer, and student are forced to stop and face their internal battles. Their circumstantial relationships tease out each unique story through a series of monologues and musical numbers that are sensitively performed by an ensemble of just four actors. The unashamedly British wit of the script lures audiences into a false comfort which is then thwarted by a powerfully emotional final quarter.

Although sometimes lacking in sustained physical characterisation, all the actors give competent individual performances, as well as pulling together for exquisitely harmonised group numbers. Martha, a black lawyer played by Mutale Reed, is perhaps the most complex character of all. Her struggle to come to terms with her husband’s depression, her pregnancy, her alcoholism, and everyday racism culminates in a truly heart-wrenching performance of You Matter Today. The song verges on breaking the fourth wall by offering a message of hope and encouragement, however the show’s direction and writing evades over-egging the sentiment by maintaining an entirely naturalistic portrayal of a mother empowering her child. Poignant moments like this are plentiful in every character.

Credit must also go to Gemma Lowcock, the only non-original cast member, who stepped into the role of Chloe with marked ease. In the new version, Lowcock not only conveys Chloe’s bipolar type two more clearly and sensitively, but exploits Munby and Reed’s intelligent structure. Chloe, with her colour-coded revision cards, glues the hard-hitting stories together through endearing friendliness and unassuming humour, all while exhibiting the versatility of Munby’s incredible, infectious score.

Advice, however, from an out-of-date composer whose ego could fill all 1,200 pages of Les Miserables should be consumed with caution; Claude-Michel Schönberg, with whom the show has been workshopped, has done the show few favours since January. If this was a plot-driven, lengthy epic I could understand why Munby would use a recitative “inspired by the theatrical language of Les Mis and Miss Saigon”, but the additional underscore in the first half and the recitative were ill-fitted to the subtlety of the script, and became tiresome by the end. In what is also quite static staging, the underscore distracts from the compelling story-telling of the script. I can’t help feeling the show could be even better if Munby and Reed stuck to their original instincts and trusted their remarkable talent.

The production also needs ironing out, with unnatural direction of movement and incomplete sound design (a soundscape, for example, would really enhance the setting), but this was likely down to unfamiliarity with the space. The simplicity should nonetheless be commended. A minimalist set and production assures that the characters and their stories remain at the forefront. And that is really where this production excels; STOP is a show that creates conversation and reinstates stories as the currency of human exchange. “Excellence isn’t a duty”, but boy, STOP deserves an award for excellence in story-telling.

STOP, Venue 58, until 28 August.