Michael Harding's new play Amazing Grace is set in the Northern Ireland of today, and has a promising theme - we must make peace with our enemies, not our friends.

In order to develop this, however, he sets in train a few sub-plots which interweave with each other less than convincingly, and creates five characters whose relationships, emotionally and socially, seem far too contrived.

The first act is cluttered with exposition. Eddie is a young republican who has been savagely beaten and is in hospital. His assailant and, apparently, his lover Tim is an RUC man who has been getting names from Eddie to pass on to militant loyalists. Ailish is a pregnant nurse with a sense of ecumenism, which she wants to further by founding a singing group with Eddie's sister Sheila and his girlfriend Daphne.

Eddie is given to hallucinations which dominate much of the act, including the appearance of three British officers directing the battle of Vinegar Hill in 1798. This and other elements create a surreal effect which does nothing for coherence.

The second half is set in a hall where Eddie and the women are rehearsing a small play about 1798 as part of an ecumenical entertainment.

They are joined by Tim, in this incarnation a decent man whose son was killed by a bomb, and whose wife has left him. The group at first argues bitterly over his presence, but are influenced by Ailish to accept him.

Then it all goes wrong, in an ending which casts a retrospective light on all that has gone before. The play is really a sermon, an elaborate plea for brotherly love. But while it may have its heart in the right place, the good intentions are inadequately channelled.

Michelle Forbes, Catherine Mack, Eileen McCloskey, Tony Rohr and Michael Colgan, directed by Brian Brady, add some value to a difficult script.