It’s been eighteen years since the Good Friday Agreement. There’ll soon be a whole generation who have no first-hand knowledge of the fear the IRA engendered in the British public and establishment throughout the 70s and 80s. A little of that hostility, suspicion and intimidation is successfully conveyed here by David Hutchison’s 2013 play in which a former British army major is taken hostage by dissident Republicans in a cottage in rural County Cork.

Directed by Andy Corelli, the production takes place in Leith’s unadorned Biscuit Factory, exactly the kind of abandoned industrial unit in which a hostage situation could be played out. Army man Lawson (Steve Hay) is chained to a radiator, and the chill of which his captors Marty (Des O’Gorman) and Caitlin (Cabrina Conaty) complain in the script is mirrored by the draughtiness of the room itself. The play is live scored by a trio of flute, cello and guitar, and performed against a projected backdrop that variously offers stylized shots of trees and lights through the cottage windows, video clips of the actors in states of mental and physical anguish, and newsreel footage. The presentation is thus very effective, capturing a sense of the frosty, febrile, and isolated situation in which our protagonists find themselves.

The script is somewhat less convincing. Several clumsy expositional segments sit very unnaturally, such as when Caitlin, who is in a relationship with Marty, sees fit to explain to him her backstory, of which he is already no doubt fully aware. There is also something unreal about the characters themselves. They are peculiarly ineffectual and unlikely kidnappers, particularly the naive college student Marty, even as part of a Republican splinter group who are thin-on-the-ground and desperate for recruits.

Things step up a gear when the ringleader Brady (Ian Sexon) arrives. Sexon, who was excellently Scouse in A Life With The Beatles at last year’s Fringe, makes an equally good Ulsterman, and applies a cool menace to this leather-jacketed terrorist. A scene where Brady and his proteges loll around eating fish and chips while mocking Lawson works well.

The music, arranged by ex-Waterboy Colin Blakey, is used mainly for scene changes, with the exception of a fetching version of James’ theological One Of The Three which is more integral to the piece. As such, though the music fits, having it played live feels something of a luxury rather than an essential.

While spending Friday night in a warehouse watching a kidnapping might sound a strange night out, it makes for a nice piece of theatre. There is just the lingering feeling that, though the set-up is great, there are stronger, more convincing stories about modern Irish Republicanism to tell.