Christopher Gray is impressed with the versatile cast in Incognito

Lord Snow thou shouldst be living at this hour. The distinguished physicist and novelist would not be other than delighted, surely, to see how modern playwrights are tackling scientific subjects head-on in the way be advocated more than 60 years ago during his Two Cultures debate with F.R. Leavis.

Where Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn led, Nick Payne is now following. Quantum mechanics loomed large in his award-winning West End hit Constellations, and in his excellent new play Incognito the focus is on neuroscience. This drama of three cleverly interwoven stories makes riveting — if at times uncomfortable — viewing at the North Wall in a fast-moving production (90 minutes, without interval) from Nabokov, Live Theatre and HighTide Festival Theatre.

The versatile cast of four, with many roles between them, perform on a centrally placed stage, beneath a framework of gleaming tubular steel (designer Oliver Townsend) with none of the audience more than a few feet from the action.

A shockingly abrupt murder and a terrifying epileptic fit are among the events we witness. Much grief (and a little laughter) is observed close-up, too. Fused with astonishing economy in the play are the bizarre story of the theft in 1955 of Albert Einstein’s brain by pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey (Paul Hickey), and an account of an pioneering operation performed in Bath at around the same time on epileptic Henry (Sargon Yelda).

Both episodes brought much heartbreak for those around them, unflinchingly presented here under Joe Murphy’s sure-handed direction. Payne wrings the withers, too, in the study, in present day London, of the work and private life of clinical neuropsychologist Martha (Amelia Lowdell).

Where the brain is concerned, “we know nothing about anything,” she rages during a show-down row with her prospective lesbian lover (Alison O’Donnell) — a woman not best pleased to discover that her new pal has an ex-husband and a son.

Frustration over her work — so much to know, so little yet known — perhaps explains Martha’s personal demons, among them drink.

If, as another character says, “the next great enterprise will be the mapping of the brain,” it is evident that science still has a long way to go in achieving this.

Incognito
The North Wall, Oxford
Until Saturday
Box office: 01865 319450, thenorthwall.com