Pugilist Specialist is not the easiest play to watch at 7.30pm on a Monday evening after a hard day at work.

The language is dense, loaded and relentless and keeping up is a bit like chasing an express train. Every time you jump onboard, you're thrown into a theatrical and intellectual experience which is absolutely first class.

But if you stop to reflect on what you are hearing, it's like tumbling out of your compartment and suddenly you're running alongside, trying to get back on again.

If you hang in there and survive the hurricane of words which whistle past your ears, the journey is intense, exhausting and totally incredible.

Somewhere in America, four marines are called to a briefing, their mission, to assasinate an Arab leader known as the Bearded Lady.

On a bare stage, they sit on wooden benches with only an ominous microphone suspended from the ceiling, recording their every word.

Female, attractive and highly ambitious, explosives-expert Lt Stein was the ideal army spokesmodel until her harassment complaint appeared on the front page of the New York Times.

Full of rage, she both loves and loves to hate the military machine she is trapped within.

Lt Freud is a cocky sniper with a vindictive sense of humour and shoot-first-think-later mentality - "my true interests are for you to know and me to fire at", he tells their supposedly liberal-minded colonel.

Stein and Freud engage on moral ground, pounding each other with not-so friendly fire. Stein thinks war is Freud's personal masturbation fantasy, he tells her, "most soldiers doubt you're human. A cyborg."

Communications expert Studdart is sparing with his words.

"I know where loose talk goes to die' he says. "There is a reason that peace and quiet are partners."

In the hands of American theatre company The Riot Group, Adriano Shaplin's political satire reflects on war past and present and reveals the moral combat which ensues when you start trying to be policeman to the world.

Stylish, powerful and massively thought-provoking, it ends with a ruthless twist which leaves the line "victory forgives dishonesty" ringing in your ears.