Finally a Scottish company has seen sense and revived David Harrower's excellent Knives in Hens. It's first since 1997. That such a powerful Scottish play can go ignored for such a length of time is bordering on the criminal.

TAG theatre's production, directed by Guy Holland, is a beautiful yet melancholic piece. Set in a pre-industrial village in remote Scotland Pony Williams (Sam Heughan) sends his wife (Rosalind Sydney) to get their grain ground to flour by the miller Gilbert Horn (John Kazek). And so starts a story of attraction and repulsion. The wife, attracted to the mysterious miller, who helps her to understand the written word, taking her language from the mundane and practical into the use of simile and metaphor, opening up her mind to a whole new way of seeing the world. This relationship culminates in their of murder Pony Williams, so that they both may be free; the wife from his bullying and his affairs and the miller from his solitary and lonely life, shunned by the villagers.

All three performances are of a high quality, in particularly Heughan's gruff Pony Williams but the true star of this play is Harrower's language, sparse and poetic its constant staccato rhythm mirrors the actors' physicality wonderfully. Coupling Harrower's use of language with John Irvine's menacing and darkly underscored instrumental all adds to the threatening atmosphere of the play.

A powerful and thought provoking piece of drama that shows Harrower's work is still as powerful today as it was when premiered a decade ago.