The colour-coded identification system for prisoners in Nazi concentration camps had a badge for almost everyone: pink for homosexuals, red for political prisoners, green for criminals, yellow for Jews, brown for Gypsies and purple for Jehovah's Witnesses. In their production of Martin Sherman's still-shocking 1979 play about the persecution of gay men under the Nazi regime, theatre company Graeae make the point that there was no such badge for the disabled. Hitler had quickly set about killing them in euthanasia camps as one of his first targets.
In Graeae's hands, the play is connected more generally with the oppression of all stigmatised groups - without losing the sting of Sherman's original. As the six actors move across the stage, one in a wheelchair and several fluidly incorporating sign language into every scene, it's impossible to ignore the extra layer of outcast status that this disabled cast bring to the harrowing narrative. Yet that layering never feels heavy-handed or forced.
This is a small-scale production, with little in the way of props or set, and that is both its strength and its weakness. The actors are hugely engaging in their portrayal of individual relationships, especially the comic bickering that turns to something much deeper between Max and Horst. Donal Toolan is especially good as the sardonic, bitterly funny Horst: "Oh well, it'll break the routine," he says on hearing that his job involves dumping dead bodies as well as shifting boulders.
The limitations of this stripped-down design are that the scale and horror of the camp never feel real, nor does the Sisyphean task of moving rocks back and forth - there is a little too much walking around a small stage space. As consciousness-raising theatre, however, Graeae's show does justice to the play's original message, while the company subtly and imaginatively add their own.
· At the Helix, Dublin, on Tuesday and Wednesday. Box office: 00 353 1 700 7000. Then touring.
