THERE’S nothing like an issue-led chavette drama about smack and that to bring a grin to this grouch. Think your life is bad?

Clock a load of this.

Open Clasp is touring Rattle and Roll for the next month or so. Written by Catriona McHugh, the company’s artistic community development director, this is not about Fifties music. The rattling is of a strictly Need Heroin Now sort.

The cast of four women includes Zoe Lambert, who would sell her body for a fiver and her mate’s last kidney for a fix.

The company are rock solid.

As I sat, shivering in my seat, it took more than a few lines of poetry about getting back on track from smack to cheer me up, but I eventually warmed to the sordid shambling of it all.

This play gives a credible voice to women society shuts the door on and for that the company and its writer deserved the warm applause of their resoundingly female audience.

Joanna Scotcher has designed a dynamic set, which is small enough for touring, but big on ideas.

There is tragedy though.

Horrific soundtrack, dodgy panto slapstick and even a tired old vegetable joke first found on an Egyptian papyrus.

For those people affected by issue overload, I’m sure there’s a questionnaire somewhere.

This is a play about female victims, who get sucked into hard drugs, sex work and abusive relationships. And if that’s not enough they’ve got subsidy-chasing art organisations desperate to make a few bob off the back of their story.

Sarah Scott