Women on the edge

Belfast, 2003. The women's branch of the UDA is looking for a treasurer and the group has just voted Brenda in.

Brenda has an invalid mother-in-law, a lazy daughter and a granddaughter to contend with; then there's a husband just out of prison, who has already slept with a neighbour, and an increasing lack of conviction in the WUDA cause.

And group pressure is intensifying because of questions around estate resident Adele's boyfriend, a suspected member of the IRA.

Gary Mitchell's play starts softly and ends horribly. Some of the relationships are thinly sketched but, as it develops, the portrait of women with nothing in their lives except a thuggish political purpose is harrowing.

Michelle Fairley (pictured with Lisa Hogg) is excellent as Brenda, who has spent years trying to redeem her past, while director Josie Rourke creates just the right nauseating backdrop of domestic tension and physical intimidation.

In placing women at the front line, Mitchell's uncompromising vision of the way a community is prepared to sacrifice blood ties and sisterhood for a cause few of them really understand, gives the familiar, modern Irish political play an unexpected, provocative and ultimately moving new twist.