"The theatre critic David Adams has raised some interesting points in these pages about what he sees as the differences between theatrical theatre and television theatre. Now surely there can't be anything much closer to watching television than three people talking directly to the audience with no more scenery than three chairs on three rectangles of sand.

Catch London Classic Theatre Company's totally gripping production on its tour and you'll discover just how electrifyingly theatrical such a seemingly simple set-up can be. That's partly to do with the quality of the writing and there is no one better than writer Brian Friel at grabbing hold of your attention, making you care about his people and ensuring that their words keep you desperate to know what's going to happen.

Molly Sweeney, blind at 10 months old, has a chance to regain her sight in her 40s. Her ophthalmologist, Mr Rice, once internationally renowned but now stuck back in Ireland, sees a chance to regain his reputation. Her husband, Frank, sees his chance to help another deserving cause by introducing her to new worlds. Only Molly isn't sure that she won't lose more than she'll gain. As each character continues their own story in their own style, sometimes seemingly interrupting each other but never, apart from an occasional hand on shoulder, reacting to each other, we get to know them very well.

Peter Cadden's Mr Rice addresses the audience as though lecturing us about one of his cases, eyes firmly fixed above our heads. Christopher Patrick Nolan's Frank engages in frantic eye contact around the audience as he regales us with his tales of (failed) great schemes or goes into pedantic detail about words he's newly discovered. This is a wonderfully comic portrait of the sort of man whose use of the words "interesting" and "fascinating" would in real life have you fleeing the room.

But it's Marie McCarthy's Molly who's the emotional engine of the play. Sure in her familiar blind world she makes us truly understand how limiting it becomes when she is able to see. Her bubbling, infectious excitements; her fears; her despairs and above all her quiet final monologue of acceptance draw us into her world of total vision, even if the vision doesn't match our reality. She, though blind, sees and perceives; the two men see but never truly perceive what is around them.

The quality of the writing would make this good television, although they would insist on several realistic sets. As stark, spare theatre it becomes something much more than that, a real emotional journey for characters and audience alike."