Seneca knew a thing or two about human darkness and was surely right when he said that it was night that brought our troubles into the light. That's certainly the case in the New York copshop where Thomas Babe's bold, absorbing, uneven play is set.

Why else would a police sergeant be dandling on his lap the naked punk he has arrested on a murder rap, especially at a moment when his daughter is preparing to commit suicide in the Bronx? Why else would his tough-seeming partner allow another male candidate for the electric chair to sing You are My Sunshine at him while sexily kissing his hand?

There's a lot of light and dark imagery in the play, the gist mostly being that the one needs the other to exist at all and the conclusion seeming to be that, morally speaking, there's not so much difference between them. But such metaphysics don't take us too far. At root, this is a play about the murk and madness of night-time New York, reflecting the mood of 1978, when Babe's play appeared and the Big Apple seemed a far more maggoty place than now.

One of the two cops on show, Corey Johnson's Jack, is a much-married man with a heroin habit and a resentment against women, but it's the other, Matthew Marsh's Kelly, who is the play's prime focus. He seems almost relieved when his bipolar daughter gets self-destructive with a gun, and he doesn't let her actions interfere with his job: which is quizzing Sean Chapman's Sean, a gay Vietnam vet-turned-con, and Colin Morgan's Jimmy, a young druggie who seems barely to care if he lives or dies, still less if he's unjustly arraigned for a murder that his lover probably committed.

There's some fierce, tough writing here and strong, intense acting from Dominic Hill's cast in a Young Vic auditorium that is, however, pretty oddly configured. Not much is added by a traverse stage, with spectators in opposite tiers watching the cops and killers, and nothing at all by the unused bridge that hovers above the desks and filing cabinets. But, yes, Babe does make us feel that men can have very strange feelings about each other, their families, their gender, their very identities.

The title is borrowed from Yeats, who wrote about the importance of “custom and ceremony” in engendering the innocence and beauty of his newborn daughter. But here custom is chaos and innocence has become lunatic confusion. You'll leave with your brains curdled. Whether that's wholly to be welcomed, I'm not so sure.

Box office: 020-7928 6363

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette