Maire Ni Ghrada's little play An Triail ("The Trial") ticks with the energy of a work put together as meticulously as a watch, and the power of a bomb with a short fuse.

Maire Ni Chathasaigh is pregnant, the father is married, her family wants nothing to do with her. She struggles out of a Magdalene Laundry clutching her child, suffers destitution in the big city, and faced with complete abandonment by the child's father, she commits a terrible crime.

We've heard the story so often we've forgotten the detail of it and the truth of it. Brid Ni Gallchoir's taut and careful production of An Triail for Amharclann de hIde coaxes all of the ghastly reality out of the script, and out of a superb cast. Joan Sheehy is the cruel mother, to whom life has been cruel, then the smug social worker in a duck egg blue tam o'shanter; Brid McCarthy convinces as the snobby, penny-pinching housewife who throws Maire out of a job, and the tart with a small bit of heart; Padraic Mac Carthaigh is the horribly plausible faithless lover and Padraic O Tuairisc, a wonderful series of desiccated, rule-watching little men. Cathy Belton as Maire magnificently ranges from utter credulity to determination to hopelessness.

By writing the play in Irish, Ni Ghrada used a much ballasted institution of the time (1964) to attack other ballasted institutions, and the result is spine-tingling. The era in which the play first shocked Damer audiences is brought vividly to life, but there is no false, patronising sense that it is far from us. Not only are its consequences still with us, so are many of the same attitudes.

speaks clearly and authoritatively across three decades, and is absolutely not to be missed.

Runs until November 21st; to book phone 01-4754901