Theatre review The Day of Reckoning Torch Theatre, Milford Haven, April 8th

DESPITE being an amateur production, a superb cast and wonderful dialogue puts The Day of Reckoning in the same category as the Torch's most prestigious offerings.

The performance opens at a seemingly innocuous meeting of a village fete committee, made up of a drunk vicar and an array of ineffectual local worthies who deliver a string of bawdy one-liners. As the play progresses and the audience starts to empathise with the characters, no clue is given that the seeds sown at this meeting will come to a terrible fruition later.

Set six months on, the second act finds the protagonists in the midst of the fete and their experiences over the elapsed period unravel. Touching on an archipelago of social issues, the play explores lesbianism, unwanted pregnancy, religion, marriage, adultery and alcoholism.

One of the most interesting topics though is Gloria Pitt's relationship with her mother which seems to be a struggle for power and independence warped by a sense of familial responsibility and duty.

This strained relationship ends in murder and what is probably the best staged piece of drama I've seen at the Torch.

In a play characterised by its use of humour and pathos, the climax is fitting and breathtaking in its delivery. On the verge of despair Geoffrey Morris saves a fellow sinner and achieves a kind of redemption himself; the performance closes on a moment of tenderness with his wife illuminated only by the dying glow of a candle.