IN a war zone, ultimately a camera is the only object/person that can bear witness to the unspeakable.

This seems to me to be the premise of Mari Lourey’s play, “Bare Witness,” convincingly performed by actors Adam McConvell, Eugenia Fragos, Todd MacDonald, Ray Chong Nee and above all, the gloriously-voiced Daniela Farinacci, the latter playing the central character of a young photo-journo, Danni.

There is another element to the punning title, a more personal one, as each of the journalists grapples with the habitual conflict between photography and humanity.

Is it acceptable to, post-mortem, rearrange a body to make a good picture? Is film intrinsically preferable to digital, or is that something we can relegate to the wastepaper basket? Are photojournalists mere adrenaline junkies whose road to success is paved with used up colleagues, associates and suffering human beings?

This is a stimulating area of discussion, but at times appeals to specialised interests. As a writer who has worked with photojournalist over many years, I was in the target range.

I suspect that the rather cavernous spaces of The Street Theatre stage, which placed the actors on one side and the audience firmly on the other, took away from the intimacy necessary to this work. The decision to encompass the experiences of five journalists may have detracted from the focus too.

In addition, Michael Carmody’s video-scape the back, portraying ravenous wolves that could represent humanity itself (or maybe the press pack) was evocative but obscure, leaving some people around me mystified.

While Kristin Rule’s quirky cello accompaniment to “Bare Witness” heightened the tension, it tended to reinforce the feeling that we were an art gallery rather than a theatre at times. The same can be said of the innovations that saw a beautiful snowfall of celluloid provide the actors with a theatrical toy.

Without doubt, Lourey’s text and the production firmed and strengthened as it proceeded. From the security of criss-crossing dialogue and snapshot images of war zone experiences in Bosnia, East Timor and the Middle East emerged a structure (a countdown of photos to Photo 001) that led to a serious and very affecting conclusion.

In short, “Bare Witness” was at the same time deeply moving and strangely dissatisfying.