DESCRIBED as 'psychological drama at its best' by the Daily Telegraph, Playgoers' February production is the gripping and powerful drama Iron.

This moving play about a young woman who visits her mother in prison for the first time 15 years after she was jailed for murder, is at the Dolman Theatre, Newport, Februrary 14-19.

The prison meeting is charged with emotional difficulties, and possibilities.

With the hidden truth always lying between them, mother and daughter struggle to build a relationship and, like the daughter, the audience is kept on tenterhooks, desperate to know the circumstances in which Fay stabbed her husband to death with a kitchen knife.

The production is a first for Ruth Ferguson as director although the former lecturer is well known in the theatre as an actress.

Written by Rona Munro and originally set in Scotland, Ruth has chosen to move the action to a local setting and the present day to increase the play's relevance, and is also a chance for young actress Rhiannon Regan, 21, to play a leading role, as the daughter Josie.

"This play has a lot of relationships and emotions running through it and nothing is ever fully explained," said Rhiannon. "It's open to interpretation which I think is great."

Tickets are available from the visitor centre at Newport Library in John Frost Square or from the box office on the night. Performances start at 7.15pm (Friday 7.30pm).