IF Zinnie Harris's pre-apocalyptic new play had been written 20 years ago it would probably have ended with a nuclear bang.

But mankind faces a new threat - the enemy within, and this thrilling parable plots the relationship between moral decay and the savage violence of terrorism which has replaced nuclear war as our greatest fear.

Harris's nightmare vision is all the more stark because it floats in time and space -- the son of a candlestick maker butchers a baker so it could be any of us in the tub of terror.

When a bride is brutally murdered in hostile enclave beyond the pale of a nebulous city, it sets off a domino-fall of violence which no-one can control, not politicians, not the Church and certainly not the innocents caught up in it.

Religion divides rather than pacifies and even though the visible symbols are of Christianity there is no sense that Harris is aiming at one faith alone. As with everything else in this play, the target is all humanity.The savagery which will ultimately lead to war is a symptom of moral decay, paralleled by the unnamed disease eating away at the body of wife and mother Therese, movingly played by Suzanne Burden. It will destroy her family who, in spite of hardships, seem to be surviving economically and morally. Their son Adie, a promising scholar, crosses the boundary into the cesspit of violence which marks the lives of his lover Sita (Sally Tatum) and her psychotic brother Jean (Kevin Trainor). Adie moves from the fringe of violence to the centre of it without anyone, himself included, ever realising quite why.

This is a wonderful addition to the RSC's summer season and speaks in all the languages of contemporary theatre. The set is stark, the dialogue is sharp and the effects as cold and stark as they were in the winter production of Julius Caesar.

Review by STEVE EVANS