IF relationships are like conversations, the centre stage marriage of Cheryl and Michael in Gary Mitchell's new audio play, Burnt Out, is a slanging match.
And shouty, played to perfection by Roisin Gallagher and Michael Patrick.
Tuning in to this second helping in the innovative Listen at the Lyric series, you got the sub-text about Northern Ireland remaining a very Troubled place.
As Michael, the primary school teacher who escaped a deprived upbringing via education, has it at the end: "We see Northern Ireland for what it really is."
And that is a world where paramilitaries still wield power and where communities still reflect the green and orange divide.
The premise is parallel to that in Owen McCafferty's astute drama Fire Below, shown at the Lyric Theatre a few years ago.
Both playwrights seem to be saying you can't escape the difficult legacy; if you scratch the surface, you get unresolved sectarian conflict.
From the start, it's a darkly humorous piece as the couple draw the battle lines over everything, including their pets, Lancer the Alsatian and Scamper the cat.
Also, he wants a child, she doesn't, in a neat reversal of the traditional approach.
But then things get really nasty and we enter vintage Mitchell territory.
The couple live in a posh home opposite one of Belfast's massive Twelfth-related bonfires.
When Michael's tiddled brother Danny (frighteningly good Packy Lee) arrives, he reveals that wood is being added. Everything then kicks off.
Nobody depicts life on loyalist side of the Northern Irish argument better than Mr Mitchell. The savagery always hits home, via character and language, as we enter a Kafkaesque, paranoid world.
Tara Lynne O'Neill's policewoman is a great jobsworth character.
The most ridiculous things get people into trouble with those who are connected, including whether Cheryl's dog Lancer has left unpicked-up dog dirt near the sacred site. It's funny and not funny at the same time.
The f-word is deployed characteristically well. Here it has the rude force it should.
In Mitchell's 1980s drama Trust, the loyalist godfather screams it with fury at his incompetent sidekick; here Cheryl reacts to her drunken brother-in-law's rambling feistily.
But as the genuinely scary drama reaches its surreal yet plausible conclusion, possibly the most memorable scene involves Danny defending his misogyny and preparing to attack his sister-in-law, whom he fancies of course, as her feminism threatens his culture.
I won't spoil the climax but let's say this is not a play to listen to mid-morning.
Is it a radio play but is it something else? This is actually a recorded rehearsed reading but with actors of this calibre, it resonates.
Dan Gordon directs with flair. I could have done without the clunky stage directions. And the play begins at maybe too high a Mitchell pitch.
Having said that, at £6 this is an incredible piece of audio theatre. Tune in to understand something about the place we inhabit.
Burnt Out is available on the Lyric Theatre website (lyrictheatre.co.uk) until October 26.
