Is the brain a creative force? Or is it a prison, something that traps us? We’re accustomed to the first of these ideas; Nick Payne’s clever new play forces us to consider the second, more troubling possibility.

Payne’s first full-length piece, Constellations, garnered a slew of awards in 2012. Similarly, Incognito uses scientific concepts to ask big human questions. Who are we? Do we have control over what we do?

Incognito moves between three different plots and sets of characters. Two of these are based on real events: in 1955 Dr Thomas Stoltz Harvey, a pathologist at Princeton Hospital, stole the brain of Albert Einstein; Henry Molaison became a medical celebrity in the 1950s when he lost his long-term memory, only able to remember loops, following a brain operation intended to treat his epilepsy. In addition to Thomas and Henry, Incognito charts a third, fictional character in the present day: clinical neuroscientist Martha, recently divorced and uncertain about her personal and professional life.

The plot strands come together at the end, in a way few will predict, yet the threads have been more subtly and thematically linked from the start. Each makes us think about the role of the brain. For Martha, the brain is a storytelling machine - and a pretty good one at that. It supplies us with a steadying narrative, to make us think we are in control. If we cannot remember, Martha claims, we are not really anybody at all.

The switches between plots are rapid; it takes the audience some time to work out who at what is at stake. However, the wit of the writing and strength of the performances (four actors play twenty-one characters) ensure that spectators quickly become immersed. The sparse staging – a silver frame surrounding the characters – resembles a cranium. It encloses the action.

Incognito is a cerebral play in every sense; it explores and pushes the brain. Ninety minutes fly past but much remains unresolved. Like the tragic Henry Molaison, I felt myself playing back scenes in my mind on loop, puzzling over their meaning. Like the brain, Nick Payne is a clever and sophisticated storytelling machine.