Written by Franz Xaver Kroetz and translated by Katharina Hehn, Stallerhof (The Farmyard) tells the story of Beppi, a girl brutalised by a life of isolation on a rural farmland, where she is starved of human warmth and kindness by her disapproving and utterly pious family. Sharing in the glare of their disapproval is Sepp, an older farm hand carrying the weight of a life of hard toil and hard luck on his shoulders, who finds himself drawn to her in what begins as an innocent friendship.

Things spirals out of control, however, during a trip to the local funfair, where the certainties and restraints of life on the farm are shaken to the core. When next they meet, and Sepp offers her a small gift, and it is the words "See, someone's thinking of you," which win over the love-starved Beppi and turn what begins as an abusive incident into a relationship of kinds, offering a tentative flicker of happiness in their barren world.

Viewed as an uncompromising portrayal of human relationships in a cruel and haunting environment, Stallerhof is considered by many to be an unnerving and classic slice of modern theatre. By turns touching, terrifying, tender and traumatic it offers little respite from its harsh and grey reality of Germany's post-war landscape. Franz Xaver Kroetz's 1972 play gets an Irish production courtesy of director Lyndel Dowd and its cast of Roisin O' Donovan, Frank Prendergast, Paula McGlinchy and Cormac Costello. It's currently running at the Granary Theatre until Saturday, July 26.

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