There is no explicit reference to pomegranates in Linda Marshall Griffiths's play, set in a depressed Welsh mining community where exotic fruit is probably in short supply. There is, however, an oblique allusion to the special status of pomegranates in the underworld, where Persephone was imprisoned for consuming a handful of seeds. Griffiths's play presents a portrait of a society whose dark secrets, incestuous relationships and simmering feuds suggest a windswept Welsh Parnassus.
Phylis, the prodigal town vamp, returns to her old flirting ground with the juvenile lover she poached from her own daughter. Her mother, Dahud, fails to recognise her, which may be due to dementia, but also a wholly understandable refusal to acknowledge someone who stills wears distressed denim and leopard-print Lycra as if it were 1986.
Mum is haunted by flashbacks of the day on which her husband Glyn and neighbour Teddy were killed in an explosion at the slate mine. There's a suggestion that Teddy may have violated Dahud, or Phylis, or possibly both.
Griffiths proves herself to be an ambitious writer with a strong feeling for poetic allusion and a rugged sense of character. The difficulty lies with the dialogue, which is enigmatic to the point where some of the finer details of the plot are not entirely fathomable.
Jo Combes's confident production weighs heavy with a requisite sense of foreboding, and features particularly commanding performances from Jennifer Piercey as the slowly degenerating Dahud, and Victoria Carling as her tearaway daughter. But, like the perplexingly strange fruit of the title, Griffiths's play proves dark, bitter and a little difficult to get into.
· Until May 13. Box office: 0161-833 9833.
