Stella Feehily’s Dreams of Violence is a cracking play – funny, serious and always accurate as a portrait of life as some people lead it.

It would make a marvellous 90 minutes of television were the overpaid and under-talented tribe who run this medium inclined to offer us other than formulaic drama series and tedious talent shows.

Anyway, those of us lucky enough to obtain tickets saw it in its intended home, on the stage, in two sell-out performances last weekend at The North Wall. That it was from Out of Joint under its long-time director Max Stafford-Clark is all that needs to be said in terms of the high quality of the production.

The play’s focus is an engaging middle-aged woman Hildy (the excellent Catherine Russell) whose time is divided between various left-wing causes – the latest is a campaign to win fair pay for cleaners – and coping with the demands made by members of her family.

These are sexual demands (fleetingly gratified) in the case of her ex-husband Ben (Nigel Cooke). He is hoping she will come back to him – hardly likely in view of his long-term commitment to a much younger and seriously clinging woman.

Sympathy, understanding and some of that precious commodity time are what are demanded by her boozy, ex-pop star mum – convincingly presented by Paula Wilcox – and her wag of an Irish dad (Ciaran McIntyre), the unwilling occupant of a bed in a nursing home. Both characters in their different ways provide a welcome element of comedy.

There is nothing in that way, though, when son Jamie turns up out of the blue, with the news that he is kicking heroin on a methadone programme. His shocking verbal attack on Hildy sums up perhaps the most important theme of the play: “Single mothers, druggie teens, homeless pensioners, disabled single mothers abused by druggie pensioners. You accept anybody, everybody but your own son.” Strong stuff.