The play, written and directed by Polly Teale, is the story of a professionally successful couple who have everything they could wish for, except a baby.

They receive exciting news that a baby girl is available to adopt but from that point on the experience is far from happy. The difference in their attitudes to the baby's mother, a prostitute and drug addict, causes rows and eventually tears them apart.

Katy Stephens, as the wife, puts in a towering performance, displaying a vast range of emotions from elation to desperation in her attempts to be sympathetic to the baby's mother, convincingly played by Lorraine Stanley. In the end both women prove incapable of looking after the baby, which they leave on the ground and walk away.

The wife's thoughts and imagination of the idyllic childhood she would like to give the baby are brilliantly portrayed on stage. A child dressed in white (Sophie Stone) flits around and plays with a doll's house while beautiful woodland scenes are projected onto the backdrop.

But the dream is shattered by reality and the threat that the real mother will take the baby back. This plays on the mind of the husband, Alistair Petrie, who is powerless to stop his wife's erratic behaviour and, burdened by his inability to father children, admits in the end that he too is a failure.

Light relief in an angst-ridden play comes from Clare Lawrence Moody who has a dual role as the wife's scatty sister and Polish cleaning woman Katya.

The latter's down-to-earth approach to life contrasts sharply with her employers and appears to be the only character with any semblance of contentment in her life. Peter Gawthorpe

Verdict: Angst-ridden drama