CANBERRA Youth Theatre is about to open its doors for a new late night performance season of Mark Ravenhill’s, satirical play “Women of Troy”, to be staged by the company’s senior Actors’ Ensemble.

Late night, you may wonder.

Well, Ravenhill, just about England’s best-known playwright for young people, never pulls his punches.

His most famous play, “Shopping and F…ing”, was once a smash hit for Youth Theatre, and other plays for young people like “Totally over You” and “Citizenship” take on issue of immediate social importance.

Ravenhill is now associate director of London’s Little Opera House at The King’s Head Theatre, under the artistic directorship of Canberra’s Adam Spreadbury-Maher, and has declared very publicly his view that we should be staging works, maybe even classics, which have more depth than most contemporary works.

Presumably with Euripides’  “The Trojan Women” in mind, Ravenhill has produced “Women of Troy”, described as a “bold, sharp and tight investigation of the effects of war, be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, or other regions of the Middle-East, on our domestic everyday life”.

CYT director Karla Conway says it is a hilarious and unsettling piece, inspired after Ravenhill heard an American from the Midwest, asking on TV, “Why do you bomb us? We’re the good guys?”

This is not a play for young children. It will be presented following each performance of “Artists Unite – A Season of 4 Short Plays”.

“Women of Troy”, C-Block Theatre, Gorman House Arts Centre, 10:30pm, November 22-26. Entry by gold coin donation or free when you present your Artists Unite ticket. Doors open 10pm.