Watching Don't Say The Words, I was assailed by a growing feeling of déjà vu. There was something oddly familiar about it all – the retelling of classical mythology in a contemporary setting, nasty violent things happening in a grotty bathroom, impromptu renditions of pop classics…then it hit me. It was Barrie Kosky's The Lost Echo all over again!

Well, not quite. Don't Say The Words is significantly shorter, for starters, and the cast and set likewise reduced in scale. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to compare the two in terms of style and content. But whereas Kosky took Ovid's Metamorpheses as his inspiration, Tom Holloway has chosen Aeschylus' Agamemnon for a reworking. In a nutshell, Agamemnon returns home after besieging Troy. His wife Clytemnestra achieves in one evening what an entire citadel of Trojans couldn't do in 10 years, swiftly dispatching him in the bathtub. Not quite the welcome home a conquering hero would be expecting. But hey, he was a bit of a bastard, you know?

When it comes to the central act of violence that the entire piece pivots on, Holloway is one of those leave-it-to-the-audience's-imagination playwrights. The most violence that you're subjected to is watching C (Anna Lise Phillips) kick a washing machine with her bare foot. But Holloway's tell-don't-show style is eerily effective. Much of the play focuses on C trying to find the right words to describe what has or what will happen, coached either by A (Jack Finsterer) or his cousin (and lover of his wife) AE (Brett Stiller). The violence of what happens out of the audience's sight is slowly pushed in your face as her story is edited and refined – "He punched me on the nose" sounds rather ineffectual and slightly comical, but when that is worked into "he hit me in the f'ing face" you're definitely not laughing.

By contrast, a conversation between A and AE is a short, staccato exchange, full of machismo posturing and bravado. There couldn't be a starker contrast to the slow, experimental teasing out of C's story. By now you're aware that Holloway likes to play with language, to the point that it seems to be almost the whole point of the play. I enjoyed the wordplay to a certain extent. However, there's a sense that Holloway was aiming for certain rhythms which director Matthew Lutton and the actors aren't quite getting – they seemed to be off by a beat or two. Despite this, all three are extremely capable when it comes to explosions of rage and other examples of being driven to the edge.

The production design is claustrophobic – Adam Gardnir's set is a cross between the world's most unhygienic bathroom and a waiting room to Hell, with water gushing everywhere at disturbing moments. Paul Jackson and Kelly Ryall put together a light and sound show that's heavy on the atmospherics, and very effective. It's an unsettling experience to sit through even though, or perhaps because, nothing much actually happens.