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Titas Halder’s striking new one-man play is about a young British Asian man, A.K., growing up in Britain and experiencing increasingly brutal incidents of racism: bullying in the playground; casual jibes at work; parents who no longer feel safe in their family home. And at the centre of it all: a funny and sensitive man, struggling to find himself and fracturing in two.

This is a strangely arresting production but there are some issues too. It feels like there’s a fairly specific play hiding in here but we’re only given scraps of details. A.K. spends his youth growing up on unnamed “Island” and later moves to the city, where he lives in a dingy flat on Seven Sisters Road. There are fleeting references to Walkmans in his childhood and, later, an allusion to the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes but the writing wavers between a feverish nightmare and something much more grounded and political.

We glimpse the significant figures in A.K.’s life – his Indian immigrant parents, childhood sweetheart Katie, and local bully Max – in tantalising flashes. His dad is harassed by his patients and feels not angry but sad; his loving mother offers her son heartfelt advice but malice too; and girlfriend Katie transforms A.K.’s life then, after a fairly low-key argument, disappears for good. All of these people are interesting. All a little undercooked.

It can make for quite a frustrating watch yet there’s rawness to the writing – both tender and raging, restrained and billowingly lyrical – that feels quite special. Annie Kershaw’s moody direction is eerie and engaging and Rajiv Pattani’s clever lighting design transforms the mood and location, which flitters all over the place, in an instant.

In his stage debut, Amar Chadha-Patel’s performance has a lovely feeling of restraint and ease to it, despite its punishing demands (the show runs at 90 minutes). Gently joking with the audience and constantly undermining himself, his character ripples with doubt, tenderness and brittle rage. He is a man on the edge. A man that might just “contain symphonies” – if only he could find his place in a world that seems stacked against him.

• At the Finborough, London, until until 30 May