JOYCE MCMILLAN

Meller’s cleanly unobtrusive design to Kirsty Stuart and Peter Collins’s superb embodiment of the central couple, and George Anton’s prowlingly brilliant stranger, disrupting safe domestic space with hurled boxes of toys, morphing in an instant from friendly fellow-parent to the threatening male figure of nightmare.

Gut is unashamedly an “issue” play, which may or may not survive the strange moment of recognition and obsession in which it was born.

As a piece of pure contemporary drama, though, it is all butflawless–gripping,perfectly-structured, beautifully staged, and designed to ask fierce and vital questions about how much we, in the comfortable west, allow fear to shape and damage our lives; and about how many of those fears are groundless, after all.

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until 12 May, and Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 15-19 May.

The main protagonists, George Anton as the stranger, Kirsty Stuart and Peter Collins as the couple, are superb