Surrounded by religious iconography three elderly women sit glued to a fuzzily pictured television set "reclaimed" from a near by skip. Ominously in the background are a number of video cameras trained on various members of the audience. So begins Scarlet Theatre's The Chair Women , performed in collaboration with Irelands Pan Pan and Poland 's Ludowy Theatre.

Subtitled "A reality theatre show" director Katarzyna Desecz takes Austrian playwright Wernerr Schah's short absurdist play about three women obsessed with the local sausage maker, sex and unblocking toilets. This is the basis for a production that aimed to explore the role of television on our lives.

The play itself is a rather amusing look at fantasies of the lonely middle class women. Containing some poignant moments beautifully underplayed by the cast, we get to see the grubby underskirt of these prim and proper ladies otherwise unremarkable lives. Unfortunately these moments are few and far between with the majority of the rest of the play bland and uninteresting, real life? Possibly.

Turning the play on its head the action is repeated by three young actors, at breathtaking speed. However this is not the main focus of the audience's attention. As the action is cranked up and let loose images appear on 2 large television screens - pictures of that night's audience watching the play, many accompanied by rapid bursts of canned laughter.

It is an interesting topic, noticing how rapped people were by the television, all but ignoring the on stage action. This piece of theatre raises an interesting question about our society's addiction to the small screen. However the actual play is lacking in bite in the language and seems a strange choice within which to explore the themes of television voyeurism. Now if you excuse me I'm off to watch some trashy reality TV.