I WOULDN'T normally wish to scoop myself but what's the point of urging you in next Thursday's County Gazette to go and see a play that's been and gone.

So when theatre as good as this opens unhelpfully on a Thursday night there's only one way to tell you about it, and that's right here on the County Gazette website.

If you're reading this today (Friday) you've still got three chances to go and see Arthur Miller's The Price at the Brewhouse. That's tonight (Friday) and tomorrow, Saturday, when there's both matinee and evening shows - tickets on 01823-283244. Go on - take a chance if you relish drama with a capital C for conflict.

Conflict is often a result of how differently we view the same things, but occasionally we might even collude in our own illusion. It is sixties Manhattan and a starched and stubborn New York cop squares up to his bloated brother, a successful doctor, while the cop's alcohol-craving wife punches the air.

Years of resentment are brought to the surface when the unsaid and the despicable are finally aired during the dispersal of some family heirlooms.

In the claustrophobia of an airless attic room we encounter a carcass of a married couple and two brothers whose relationship is apparently paralysed by the past. What they could do with is a mediator but instead an ancient Jewish second-hand furniture dealer materialises.

There are magnificent performances here from each of Compass Theatre Company's four-strong cast, and the set is equally remarkable, with its fully boarded floor and its impossibly tiered wall-to-wall clutter. Funnily enough, dead dad's chair is one of the stars of this production. No-one dares sit in it apart from the dealer, who ignorantly uses it to command centre stage while deftly shelling an egg for his lunch.

The piece is directed with sensitivity and confidence. Not a move is superfluous or out of place. There is no gimmickry. Here for once is a genuinely powerful piece of theatre that requires no artificial aids.

Although it occasionally brings to mind Pinter (The Caretaker) and Beckett (Waiting For Godot, Krapp's Last Tape), The Price is more devastating. It is theatre you can feel. Words like utterly and compelling come to mind.

ROD HANCOX