The Good Boy Game, Q The Locals, The Q, 18-20 June

Patrick Vermillion's "The Good Boy Game" is a jet-black comedy in the tradition of the early Neil LaBute or Tracy Letts plays, dealing with a parenting crisis in suburban New Jersey when mum and dad realise that their teenage son has been planning a school shooting, and the pop-psychology attempts that two liberal parents attempt to adopt to fix their son. There's a number of twists and turns, some as old as Sophocles, on the way to a brutally dark finale. It asks the age-old question, "Can good really repair evil?" and doesn't find many comforting answers - in an age when liberal values are proving increasingly ineffective in the face of intolerance and anger, is gamifying morality a solution?

At the centre of the play is Giuliana Baggoley as Mary-Beth, the mother who uses her psychiatrist's theories and dives in deep - Baggoley plays her with a high level of tension behind every activity, even as she tries to find resolutions that get increasingly inappropriate, even in the final scene when everything appears to be resolved, you still feel the tension underlying her every move. As the son she tries to reform, Alastair McKenzie is a tight ball of rage, with most of his concessions coated with venom. Bruce Hardie as the father caught between his disgust for his son and his fear of the social implications of revealing his actions is compellingly weasel-like in his contortions. And Elaine Noon as the therapist who blithely advises without fully knowing the circumstances, has power and presence in her not-at-all-helpful suggestions, up until the point when she gets insight into what's been done with her ideas. 

Vermillion's play doesn't let anybody off the hook - it's more an exploration of liberal hypocracies than it is of the poisons of the manosphere, and it's presented in appropriate "In Yer Face" theatre style by Caitlin Baker, complete with Brechtian title-cards and hard-rock electric guitar stings between scenes. Baker also co-designed the impressive toy-house set with Kayla Circeran and co-designed the sound, bringing a raw-edged play to the usually-polished Q stage. There's impressive fight choreography too from Lachlan Ruffy at the point when liberal platitudes fail the cast and something rawer is required.

This is a piece that is edgy and prickly in several ways, and it's not an easy one to take. But if you want theatre that slaps you in the face a bit, this will certainly do that.