Style, not content, ultimately hampers Pearse Lehane's allegory of the highly contested issue of abortion: the divisiveness of the matter cannot be taken lightly, and he does well to set his tale - of a young girl and father flouting the conventions of the state in their attempt to rid the girl of her unwanted child - in the theatrical world of Greece.

Unfortunately, the cod-classical mode of the text's prose poetry serves too well to veil the play's meaning, making much of the unwieldy exposition almost impossible to follow. A barrage of verbiage attempts to create a high-flown tone, but it comes across as a parody of antiquated texts.

The Isle of Emerus, like all good post-colonial states, has set the rules of its new order, figuratively and literally, in stone. Not even the power of the king's house can overthrow almighty law.

Not, at least, until young Angelene, sister to Queen Helen, falls pregnant and is taken on a journey to the kingdom of Regentus, the former oppressor, in which one can procure "the herb", the dastardly weed that causes the highest atrocity in the eyes of Zeus: the abortion of a foetus.

To their credit, the large cast commit themselves fully to their roles, and director Jacqueline McCarrick's style of staging - energetically, gracefully physical - invigorates the text through powerful uses of movement and space.

The X case is transparently on display, yet Lehane could be playing a dangerous game. In striving to show the emptiness and manipulativeness of excessive morality and misogynist sermonising, he has unwittingly created a piece that mirrors all too well the pitfalls and empty logic of that kind of discourse.

Runs until September 22nd; bookings at 01-6713387)