There is a remarkable moment – one of several – in this piece directed by Scottee, and created from transcripts of conversations with working-class LGBTQI people from around England, when the performers whitewash out the single-word slogan dominating the stage. That word is “tolerance”, and as it dissolves something else starts to appear, as if it was a magic trick: the red stripes of the St George’s flag. The stripes bleed as if wounded.

'It makes me a bit nervous': Scottee's cabaret about queer lives in Brexit Britain Read more

The English Defence League and Ukip have LGBT groups. Those voices are heard in this complex, knotty and surprising conversation piece, in which questions about tolerance and how far it extends are picked apart – often in startling fashion. Putting Words presents words and views seldom heard in the theatre, in a way that demands a complex response. It cunningly sets about making us listen, really listen. In the process, we’re led to reconsider the tribes to which we think we belong, those we reject, the identities we choose and why we consider ourselves part of one community but not another.

There is nothing particularly unexpected in the first few minutes as the show’s three superb performers of colour – Travis Alabanza, Jamal Gerald and Lasana Shabazz – start to give us distinct but familiar stories of growing up gay and eventually coming out. There’s the grammar-school kid who wasn’t physically bullied but who was taunted by everyone at school for being different, to the point of almost being locally famous. There’s the youngster who took refuge in an evangelical church in a failed attempt to “pray the gay away”. And there’s the boy who went to a minor public school where it was expected that “you’d indulge in a bit of buggery” but not really be gay.

You are quickly alerted, however, that all might not be quite what it seems as the performers lip-synch the text. The effect is garish and cartoonish: every word is exaggerated, every mannerism heightened. The gulf between the performers and their wordsbecomes increasingly apparent, and gradually it dawns that expectation is making you miss the meanings behind the words. An apparently heart-warming story of finding acceptance among pensioners of Blackpool is not what it initially appears to be at all. One blames Muslims for anti-gay sentiment; another expresses devotion to Margaret Thatcher.

In fact, the spirit of Thatcher hovers over a piece where the language of drag and rightwing rhetoric become entwined in smeared red lipstick – like a dreadful parody of the minstrel white lips – wigs and handbags. But this brave and often uncomfortable evening is anything but a drag, even as it becomes harder and harder to watch as the performers are forced to lip-synch the increasingly racist statements of the interviewees. We may not like what we hear, but if we have learned anything in the few months since the Brexit vote, we can’t ignore it.

• At Roundhouse, London, until 3 December. Box office: 0300-6789 222.