Gay, charismatic New Yorker Ethan is in a bad place. The orders have stopped coming in at his one man business, where he prints custom T-shirts and merchandise, and he is trying to claim unemployment with little luck.

His last big client was the Kamala Harris campaign, but now, several months into the Trump presidency, that source of revenue has dried up.

He is also emotionally drained and vulnerable after being left by his husband, and his self-esteem is at an all-time low.

Out of the blue, he gets a call from a woman who needs a large number of T-shirts to be printed overnight and delivered to upstate New York the next day. The only problem is that the text on the shirts says “Thank You President Trump”. She promises to pay him well, so he pulls out all the stops for her. She is delighted and orders many more.

This is the start of an unusual relationship. The orders keep getting bigger and bigger, and in four months he is able to pay off his debts and even book a dream cruise for his parents. Although he still doesn’t know anything about her, he and the woman become friends. Miraculously, she is able to pull strings to get him out of a traffic fine, and she even gets him a date with a gay plumber. It’s as if she has become his guardian angel.

But things take a turn for the worse when ICE turns up in his Polish sister-in-law’s neighbourhood and Ethan is spotted demonstrating against them. The woman threatens to pull her orders unless he stays away from the protests. At first he complies, but then she changes the text on the shirts to three shocking words, which for him is one step too far. He flies into a rage with her over the phone.

The woman, who seems apolitical, sympathises but puts forward her argument for working with a right wing organisation and why she wants to help him in particular. She then delivers an ultimatum.

The moral dilemma that he now faces plummets him into a spiral of anxiety. Sometimes good people are tempted to do bad things for good reasons – and sometimes the devil appears as an angel of light.

This is a firecracker of a performance from Frank Murdocco. His Ethan is funny, passionate and totally authentic.  His writing is tight, intelligent and moving. In just an hour, Sublimation packs a huge punch intellectually and emotionally.

With the seductive voice of Tony nominee Maria Dizzia as the mysterious woman, this Faustian play for today is one of the best little shows in town.