We all love a plot twist but New York theatremaker Andy Sandberg’s play feels like a cautionary story about what happens when you twist too hard.

Well actually maybe ‘plot twist’ isn’t right: it’s more that writer-director Sandberg is obsessed with the idea of bamboozling us, with each new scene in his play determinedly defying expectations and eliciting a bigger WTF than the last.

This isn’t inherently a good thing. Especially if your expectation was that you were going to see star Noah Schnapp in the lead role of Dylan, an American teenager who kills two people in a drink driving incident and whose parents agree to the outlandish defence that he was simply too cocooned by privileged to understand the gravity of his actions.

And to be fair Schnapp does play Dylan, who is based on real-life Texan teen Ethan Couch. But it’s a supporting role – in the first scene he wanders briefly through his parents’ posh living room while they talk to the very expensive New York lawyer they’ve flown out. Then there’s one set in his bedroom. And that’s kind of it for this version of Dylan. It’s odd: you have to think that having a not-too–big role may have been what tempted Schnapp into making his stage debut. But he’s perfectly good here and could clearly have handled more.

then abruptly leaps ahead to after the trial, where Dylan successfully escaped with a slap on the wrist. It certainly subverts our expectation of a courtroom drama with a juicy role for Schnapp. But to what end? The rest of the second half pings around the bereaved and makes the point that the consequences of Dylan’s actions spiral far past Dylan. But if the sections are well done in their way, they state the obvious, surely, while the fatalistic notes about the American justice system are blunted by both the skipping the trial and the fact it feels odd to be lecturing a British audience about this (this is the show’s world premiere).

That’s nothing compared to a second half that seems so desperate to wrongfoot the audience that I suppose I shouldn’t spoil it. Let’s just say the scenario changes so drastically that it feels like a different play. Schnapp does have a big-ish part here – although the fact it’s as a totally different character does exemplify Sandberg’s apparent need to take us by surprise at the expense of everything else.

There is undoubtedly some genuine ballsiness at play. The individual scenes are strong enough. And of course, plenty of American plays about America premiere in London. But Sandberg comes to us as a virtual unknown and then teases us with confounding plot leaps and the withholding of his star actor. It’s hubristic behaviour that’s simply not backed up by the quality of the writing.