LIKE Rabbits – described as a “quietly devastating” new work for two performers inspired by Virginia Woolf’s short story Lappin and Lapinova, will be at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre for one night only Friday, January 16.

A man and a woman meet and have sex and fall deeply in love. Each night the lovers slip away from their real lives into a world that exists only in their shared imagination: a world that belongs to them, in which tax returns and shopping lists and commuting do not exist; a world in which they are not their normal selves, but King of the Rabbits and Queen of the Hares.

But what begins as a game soon becomes a battleground, and the couple hurtle towards a tragedy of the saddest, and most ordinary kind.

Following this performance of Like Rabbits, Ben Duke will also perform a short extract from Lost Dog Dance’s forthcoming production of Paradise Lost, inspired by Milton’s epic poem, for the Chichester audience.

Lost Dog artistic director Ben Duke said: “I was initially drawn to Lappin and Lapinova because it was a story about a relationship existing in two separate realms at the same time. There is the reality of this couple and then there is their fantastical world. It felt like it was a story that needed two separate mediums – words and movement – to stage it."

  • Tickets £16 and £18. To book visit cft.org.uk or call the box office on 01243 781312.