Two things not to do: judge a book by the cover, or a play by its title. My first reaction to the label "Choke My Heart", as an indicator of the content of Canadian Celia McBride's first play, was that it could hardly be sentimental. The corn just doesn't grow that high any more. But how could I possibly have surmised that it was a manipulation of the word artichoke?

Now you're thinking that the work is a lighthearted comedy; a miss by a mile. The elements of the drama, premiered to a pensive audience by the Red Kettle Theatre Company last night, are incest, murder, mutant babies, suicide and associated physical and psychological violence. Laugh at that lot if you can.

It begins on a North American farm, where neighbour Fanny has made a rare visit down the hill to leave a gift of two giant artichokes for Skin and Cray, twin brothers. She lives with her daughter, Louwhysa, and there is clearly a sinister frisson between the two households. Skin bullies his smaller brother almost sadistically, and practically cossets the freak vegetables, toting them around in a pram.

We get the plot in driblets. Lou is the boys' sister, the third of triplets. But there were also twin boys, and the retarded Cray occasionally slips into calling Fanny mom. A dead dad is mentioned, who forced Lou and Skin into unnatural practices, with results so grisly that they were buried by moonlight. So now: in what accursed mulch did those artichokes grow?

It's that obvious and absurd, a variant on the dead-and-never-called-me-father school of melodrama. There is nothing more to it than the process of learning what happened, and minimal ingenuity gets one there long before the stage ending. There's a word for that: anti-climax.

Jim Nolan directs a cast of three and a walk-on, who try valiantly but are unable to bring credibility to their preposterous, one-note characters. Brian Doherty is the tough, violent Skin, Charlie Bonner the constantly thwarted Cray, Catherine Byrne the pixillated, moon-smitten Fanny and Mary Boland the mute Lou, bereft of dialogue.

Ben Hennessy's set design is imaginative but wasted, as indeed are all the substantial talents invested in this fanciful failure. The corn does, after all, still grow high.

Continues until July 4th. To book, telephone: 051-855038