Welcome to Bromley, 1976 – and a tale of “betrayal, deceit and heart-following”. It’s told by Karim, a young man still finding his feet as he attempts to strut towards adulthood. Even with an almost three-hour running time, this sprawling story – about the 17-year-old mixed-race, British-Indian Karim and the travails of his immigrant family – can feel fit to burst in Emma Rice and Hanif Kureishi’s adaptation of the latter’s debut 1990 novel.

But the zesty, raucous energy of Rice’s distinctive style, delivered in a co-production between her company Wise Children and the Royal Shakespeare Company, nicely matches the pinwheeling plot and unrestrained humour of Kureishi’s writing.

Kureishi’s book was made into a TV series in 1993, but this is its first stage outing (a play of his My Beautiful Laundrette has recently been on tour, too). It was worth waiting for: a top-flight cast, nimble staging and deliciously retro soundtrack and costuming ensures this is a good night out – even as the narrative is grounded in a late-1970s backdrop of economic hardship and simmering racism. Yes, there are spinning disco balls, ABBA and the Bee Gees, acres of flared jeans and inflated comic performances – but beneath it all, the characters ask real questions about how to balance happiness with duty, authenticity with expectation, ambition with integrity.

The second half also takes an enjoyably metatheatrical twist, when Karim works with a manipulative theatre director named Matthew Pyke to devise a work about “class, race, fucking and farce”. The sending-up of theatrical pretensions prompts sniggers of recognition, but also sharpens questions about who gets to tell what stories on stage: Matthew has Karim “study” figures from his community, then gets annoyed that he’s offered up the wrong kind of representation. By contrast, throughout Rice’s production it is Karim who has the mic, speaking directly to the audience. 

Nevertheless, Karim ends up sexually entangled with the director and his wife. Rice keeps things in rompy sex-farce territory, with added absurdism: pieces of fruit stand in for body parts and party poppers go off at a climax. Perhaps a more sour, even bitter note might have been struck here – but the silliness is fun, and regular Rice collaborator Ewan Wardrop is pitch-perfect as the smarmy Matthew.

The cast is bright and buoyant, bouncing around Rachana Jadhav’s efficiently layered and higgledy set – stairs surreally leading up to a patch of turf, a phone box that’s also a bedroom door. And particular praise must be reserved for Dee Ahluwalia, who makes a captivating and charismatic Karim, warmly grabbing the audience by the hand and pulling us into his jam-packed coming-of-age story.