By Joy Watters at The Byre Theatre, St Andrews

THE STELLAR QUINES Theatre Company is known for its work with Scottish women in theatre but this latest production features the writing of a man—and an English one at that.

It is a great decision since Torben Betts’ writing is exciting and original, both in its themes and its use of language.

Theatrical, powerful, surreal, blackly humorous and frightening, The Unconquered is 90 minutes of astonishing, thought- provoking drama.

The lights go up on visual artist Keith McIntyre’s astonishing monochrome set, the shell of a house where perspective seems all askew.

The costumes too are black and white and the initial impression is of a comic book world.

Set in a coastal town somewhere in the UK, it tells of a fiercely intelligent schoolgirl who lives with her parents.

She has shut herself away from the world at large, despising its politics and culture, reading political tracts.

She hates her home life and the bourgeois domesticity her parents embody, angrily denouncing them and all they stand for.

She rages at the anomie which surrounds her but then comes a people’s revolution and the future is uncertain.

The girl has missed taking part in the revolution because of her self-imposed exile.

A brutal soldier kicks his way into the family’s house and lives. He is to become first a factory worker and then a besuited captain of industry as the political climate changes.

The action is accompanied by the sound of helicopters, gunfire and marching, charting the progress of the revolution and the counter-revolution.

Muriel Romanes’ direction is pitch perfect as the cast of four take on this incredibly demanding piece and excel.

Betts’ writing is hilarious and lyrical, bleak and mordant. His use of language is continually changing and at times poetic.

It changes from the sublime to the ridiculous and the targets move from mocking suburbia to the condemnation of an oppressive state.

Pauline Turner is bold and forthright as the girl, agonised and raging. Jane Guernier and Kevin McMonagle as Mother and Father work beautifully together perfectly in tune with the changing demands of the writing, and Nigel Barrett too impresses with his portrait of a shifting political opportunist.

The Unconquered can be seen in Edinburgh, Cumbernauld and the Birnam Institute next month.