In this play by local writer Anita Sullivan, Alex Hill plays the role of a trapped wife escaping from her failed marriage. As with Shirley Valentine, she talks to herself but there the parallel ends.

While Shirley found sunlight and happiness on a Greek island, the woman here flees from the comfort of a detached house to a grotty bedsit where the walls are far from friendly, becoming objects of torment, making strange noises and carrying a womans haunting voice.

The play is an intriguing study of someone undergoing a nervous breakdown, with moments of humour and startling force.

The writing keeps the audience on the edge of their seats throughout the evening.

In a part specially written for her, Hill gives a tour-de-force performance, switching convincingly from rational narration to volatile paranoia. Her depiction of the meeting with the woman on the other side of the wall is equally mesmerising and shocking.

This is virtually a one-woman play but credit must go to Eleanor Gamper for providing the noises and voice behind the walls, which become a metaphor for the division between sanity and madness.

Barrie Jerram Be careful these walls have fears theatre