Domestic violence is a sensitive subject. It needs to be addressed with feeling. And if, as a playwright, you want to bring this social taboo onto the stage, you are going to have to do it carefully.
      Tamsin Oglesby's new play, The War Next Door, presents the story - in cringe-making rhyming verses no less  of a working-class Eastern-European couple, wife beater Ali and his wife Hana, and their neighbours, Max and Soph, who must come to terms with the moral implications of being witnesses to this dark secret.
      The facts and the way in which they are told are wholly incredible. On one side of the wall we have two caricatures of contemporary middle-class society: the dope-smoking barrister, Max, and his wife Soph, a silly, narrow-minded woman obsessed with all things eco-friendly. They are cowards and hypocrites, always speaking of high ethical principles and yet constantly undermining them. On the other side, we have two very different stereotypes: Ali, the loathsome thug and misogynist; and Hana, probably the most likeable of them all, who struggles to stand up to her husband in defiance, but all too often receives only the recompense of his fist.
      To their credit the cast do a pretty impressive job of telling the story insofar as there is one to tell (  though one comes away feeling that one has only watched half a play). David Michaels' portrayal of the pompous, duplicitous Max is infused with irony and goes some way to rescuing the playwright's poor attempt at satire. Jonathan Coyne performs the part of Ali with charisma and oozes a sense of evil; so that we could almost be convinced he's a wife-beater. And the director's choice of theatrical effects ­ miming the violence; shouting drowned out by overbearing music; blood and bruising on Hana's face  make thought-provoking scenes. Nevertheless one still leaves the theatre disappointed that an issue as dark and as real as this is touched so lightly and in such a contrived way. The play was publicised as a black comedy, and Oglesby certainly tries hard to make you laugh, but the fact is: there is nothing comic about domestic violence.
Florence Mackenzie