Chris Dunkley's play takes place in a fly-blown rural bar in the early days of the Balkan conflict. I cannot vouch for its authenticity, but Lu Kemp's production does seem to have a specifically oppressive, east-European feel. Perhaps this is something to do with the sticky linoleum, the ennui hanging in the air like stale alcohol and the accumulating pile of dead pigs in the corner.
Dunkley's play is less an attempt to understand the war than a demonstration of the impossibility of ever doing so. Although the Balkan conflict did not centre on a clearly defined theatre of war, it had a passionately active fringe: and here the barrage of offstage fire comes from a husband and wife feuding over a drinks machine.
Their son, Marko, has had his nose shot to pieces in the crossfire, and now spends his time trying to fix the focus of conflict so that it will dispense a can of Coke. It is this random mixture of absurdity and violence that makes Dunkley's play so believable, though no less difficult to follow.
A further complication arises in the characters' compulsion to reinvent their stories. Dunkley states in the programme that western journalists rapidly came to characterise both Serbs and Croats as inveterate liars, part of a cliched conception of the "Balkan mentality", which includes an addiction to plum brandy, a predilection for violence and a surprising hospitality towards strangers. Dunkley's script does not actually do very much to challenge those stereotypes.
Dunkley introduces the figure of a traumatised western journalist (convincingly played by Daniele Lydon) to play abusive mind-games with the inhabitants of the bar. Philip Ralph is outstanding as Marko, but the magnificent Damien Goodwin dominates as the drunk, deranged and palpably unpleasant Milos. His bleary waltz with a dead pig to the Beatles' Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite has to be seen to be believed. Or disbelieved, as the case may be.
· Until February 15. Box office: 01723 370541.
