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If relations between the sexes really is a war, then Carol Birch has launched the theatrical equivalent of a battlefield nuclear weapon.

For in a one-woman, three act attack, Ms Birch (Shirley Valentine) left no stone unturned. And there was a man under each and every one.

But to call it a women's play would be to do it an injustice -- although the loudest laughter was certainly in the higher octaves.

The men in the audience, and there were a good number, laughed too -- albeit a little more self-consciously.

Willy Russell's work -- a hit film of the 80s starring Pauline Collins and Tom Conti -- turns a 42-year-old wife and mother-of-two's holiday in Greece into an odyssey of self-discovery.

The play begins in the working class Liverpool home of Mrs. Bradshaw, ne me Valentine, and her husband Joe -- never seen, but an ever-present fixture.

Something like the washing machine, really, but less useful.

Amid a fusillade of one-liners, Ms Birch skilfully paints a word picture of a woman who slowly realises she's got one foot -- and most of her brain -- in the grave and resolves to do something about it.

The scene is set as she sits in the kitchen of her terraced home while Joe's egg and chips sizzle and Shirley bemoans the fact she doesn't.

She likens marriage to the Middle East -- things get juggled about, you deal with the crises, observe the curfew and hope the ceasefire holds.

But when the frustrated Shirley describes sex as like the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's, a lot of pushing and shoving and you still come out with very little, you realise that the ceasefire won't hold much longer.

And as she muses on the life of high school teacher's pet Marjorie -- a high-class call girl with a jet-set lifestyle whom she bumped into while shopping -- the wistful sense of a life slipped away is almost palpable.

Salvation, however, comes in the unlikely guise of Jane, born-again feminist after she caught her husband in bed with the milkman.

Jane, apparently unscathed by the experience apart from no longer taking milk in her tea, pays for Shirley to join her on a dream holiday to Greece.

Shirley is determined to go -- but manages to pack and leave without plucking up the courage to tell her husband. And that, of course, is where the real trouble starts.

Ms Birch managed to sustain her role well, especially as there's no-one else to fall back on.

She displayed a good sense of comic timing and a creditable Liverpool -- or Liverpo-o-ol -- accent, although it did come and go a little at times.

And, with a Willy Rushton script which works on the shotgun principle, it's perhaps inevitable a few pellets will miss the mark.

But that may be due to cultural differences between Bermuda and the northwest of England as much as anything else.

But, taken as a whole, Ms Birch, directed by her husband Ian Birch, turns in a more than creditable performance as a battle-weary footsoldier in what a Scots Reformation preacher called the "monstrous regiment of women''.

RAYMOND HAINEY VALENTINE'S DAY! -- Carol Birch, who gives a sharp-edged and witty performance in Jabulani Rep's production of Shirley Valentine.

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