Against the mixture of fantasy and farce served up by the current election campaign, Wild Bees offers a bracingly realistic appraisal of the watershed years when Rogernomics ushered in a brave new world of asset sales and employment contracts.
The play chronicles the triumph of neo-liberal economics by dissecting a last-ditch union battle to hold on to old-style collective bargaining in the face of a ruthless drive towards individual contracts.
Although the story arc has the grim inexorability of a Greek tragedy, the drama has an unmistakable ring of truth that comes from writing born out of personal experience.
Playwright Phil Ormsby draws on his years as a union delegate in the telecommunications industry to produce instantly recognisable characters and the interminable rounds of phony negotiations are enlivened by some brilliantly witty dialogue - especially when an old-style shop-floor delegate played by Kevin Keys struggles with the intricacies of feminist semantics.
The predominant tone is documentary realism but when the trade-unionists become infected with the corporate culture they are fighting against, the drama takes on the circularity of Kafkaesque nightmare.
Each character in the large cast is drawn with great subtlety and Stuart Devenie's expert direction ensures they all come to life as utterly convincing individuals.
Donogh Rees brings a brassy humor to her portrayal of a down-to-earth call-centre worker, while Alex Ellis captures the oleaginous charm of a quietly ambitious corporate player. Damien Avery is chillingly ruthless as a company hit-man who takes on the apocalyptic voice of an Old Testament prophet while Alexander Campbell's nuanced performance captures the diffidence of a man torn between two worlds.
As the last man standing, Jordan Blaikie movingly rages against the dying of the light although his character is tragically incapable of articulating any alternative vision and can only appeal to a vague nostalgia for simpler times.
What: Wild Bees
Where: The Basement, to September 20