Like a love-story with a cliff-edge, I Want Love invites you to jump right off the relationship no-go zone and onto the rocks below. Theatre-maker and performer Hannah Ringham’s one-woman tale of love, loss and loneliness goes well beyond the acceptable face of a woman’s break-up into the depths and poetic chaos of the subsequent breakdown. Intimate, honest and deeply astute, not only is the soul laid-bare in this raw exploration of loss, but the body too. Intense physical commentary courses like a wild river through the arteries of Ringham’s performance, providing a whole-body experience of emotions that renders ‘being yourself’ a real art form. Concepts like choice and freedom are filtered through this stark physical commentary, smoking, semi-nudity and dancing with wild abandon all feature. This powerful ride careers about as dangerously beyond the dull ache of tempered love-song territory as is possible, with sharp, brutally honest script-writing and physical choreography buffered by charming and disarming dark comedy and wilful disregard for the ‘acceptable face of grief’. Well worth the leap.

Tue 9 May – Wed 10 May at 8pm, Birmingham REP Broad Street, Birmingham B1 2EP, 0121 236 4455. From £10 www.birmingham-rep.co.uk