THE Focus Theatre has lover the years, maintained a line to modern American playwrights, and its new offering, by James McLure, is a black comedy set in the immediate wake of the Vietnam war. Trauma of one kind or another rules in a veterans hospital, with three inmates who are crippled mentally, physically or both.

Gately, decent but dumb, absorbed in a project to repair a radio; for him it is a yardstick for his recovery and return to a world once more in working order. His two friends keep stealing the spare parts, however, leaving him disorientated. Natwick is the over sensitive son of rich parents, superficially superior but suicidally insecure beneath. Silvio, whose genitals have been blown of affects a macho, dominant persona.

The action takes place in a hospital lounge and is structured in a series of staccato; sketches with the focus almost entirely on, oddly enough, comedy. All of the connected, snippets are amusing, and a few are hilarious. Silvio's verbal excesses are particularly funny, such as his attempt to explain the whole sperm business to Gately using salmon spawning metaphors. Beneath the laughter there is always the sense that the trio are irretrievably damaged.

Brent Hearne directs with, an excellent ear for the nuances of the barbed, realistic dialogue, and is rewarded with interpretations that make the most of it. Robert McDowell is a convincing Gately, Paul Keely a suitably twitchy Natwick, and Paul Roe steals the evening's honours as the manic Silvio, a dominant performance. The play is short of depth, and there are few anti war resonances to take away from it but it is well written, cleverly constructed and entertainingly produced.