Bang Bang Bang

Octagon Theatre, Howell Croft South

Until September 12

OUT Of Joint's latest production at the Octagon certainly starts with a bang - a harrowing experience that gets the adrenaline levels rocketing and the audience well and truly paying attention.

This tale of aid workers in the Congo may be set hundreds of miles from home, but the problems the characters face are universally human There are moments in the play that are truly shocking, but there are also some of intense poignancy and intimacy.

Director Max Stafford Clark and writer Stella Feehily spoke to dozens of aid workers and journalists to gather material for the play, and it shows. Bang Bang Bang avoids the lecturing tone which interrupted the company's last play at the theatre, Mixed Up North, instead using pacey dialogue and impressive sound and staging to create a genuine sense of realism - surprising considering the extreme subject matter.

Depicting polar opposites are Frances Ashman, as the caring Mama Carolina, and Babou Ceesay, the charming but vicious warlord Colonel Mburame. Although two very different characters, both performances were vividly realised and central to the picture of a chaotic word where nothing is simple.

Orla Fitzgerald plays the driven and passionate senior researcher Sadhbh, so single-minded as to be almost alienating, which makes her sudden, very personal, tragedy all the more shocking. Julie Dray, meanwhile, is frenetic as the naive, well-meaning and highly strung intern Mathilde, and Dan Fredenburgh brings groundedness as Stephen, Sadhbh's boyfriend, a former aid worker who knows all to well the dangers and pressures the job entails.

Jack Farthing and Paul Hicky provide excellent supporting performances, with the latter particularly providing many of the moments of black humour which cut through the horror like sharpened knives. And while the characters are undoubtedly deeply affected by events, a suitably ambiguous ending suggests that there might, after all, be hope of something better to come.

Kat Dibbits