Stella Feehily’s excellent new play Bang Bang Bang explodes on to the stage of The North Wall this week with all the force implicit in its title. With all the force, I might add, and the ‘in yer face’ realism, so long associated with Out of Joint and its inspirational director Max Stafford-Clark.

The opening moments show us a terrifying attack on two women human rights investigators cowering in their compound in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

How this concludes is revealed only later in the play. After the startling start, the action moves to London where we meet the elder of the women, Sadhbh (Orla Fitzgerald) as she prepares to leave for Africa, to the dismay of her partner Stephen (Dan Fredenburgh). Having worked in the same field himself, he is all too aware of its dangers — both physical and, in his case, mental — and hoping that Sadhbh might now consider a life and family of her own.

Her commitment is underlined, though, during a pizza-chomping dinner party that follows at which we are introduced to young Mathilde (Julie Dray), the new field worker who is to travel with her. (“Who did you sleep with?” asks Stephen, incredulous that she should have landed the job with no experience. “I only want to do work that I’m passionate about,” she has already explained.)

This is a play that has much to say — and say with great acuity and wit — about what motivates people to swap comfort and security for daily danger in a country not their own.

Once Sadhbh and Mathilde are in Congo, and start to hear the horrific stories of child rape told to them by the likes of Amala (Zara Brown) — who is dragged from her home to be the sexual plaything of a group of rebel soldiers — we start to understand the crucial importance of their work.

What they are up against is no less graphically revealed in Sadhbh’s interview (pictured) with a Warlord (Babou Ceesay) who disconcertingly switches on an instant between affability and chilling menace.

Fame and fortune is seen to be the motive — at least in part — of the pair of newsmen we encournter in Congo — the hard-bitten hack Ronan (Paul Hickey) and the eager tyro photographer Vin (Jack Farthing) who clearly has more ambition than regard for his (and others’) safety. These are guests at another party (Feehily is good at these) where sex, drugs and lashings of booze present us with more of the realities of life as it is led by our travellers into darkness.

Until Saturday: 01865 319450 (www.thenorthwall.com)