EVERY now and then global events move ahead of a theatre company’s programming, lending a selected play an added resonance. Such is the case with Dundee Rep’s new production of Lucy Kirkwood’s 2016 drama The Children.

When the Rep’s artistic director Andrew Panton alighted on this anguished drama about three nuclear physicists dealing with the aftermath of a radiation leak, he could not have envisaged that his production would coincide with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The fire at Europe’s largest nuclear power station (the Zaporizhzhia plant in southern Ukraine), which was caused by the fighting, and the Russian occupation of both that facility and the decommissioned power station at Chernobyl, give Kirkwood’s play a frightening immediacy.

In the drama, Rose (Emily Winter) returns from a long period in the United States and drops in on her old friends and work colleagues Hazel (Irene Macdougall) and Robin (Barrie Hunter). However, coming as it does in the aftermath of a disastrous leak from the nuclear power station at which all three used to work, her visit is far from random.

Rose’s long period of absence is a smart device. It enables Kirkwood to lay out for us, the audience, not only the history and impact of the disaster, but also the interconnected back stories of the characters (Hazel and Robin are married with grown-up children; Rose and Robin used to be lovers, and continue to carry a candle for each other).

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That the playwright does this almost imperceptibly, through emotionally compelling, always plausible dialogue, is testament to the skill and subtlety of her writing. That skill is also reflected in the nicely calibrated structure of the piece, which, in its narrative development and moments of revelation, is a classically well-made play.

It would be an outrageous spoiler to divulge the central, revelatory moment of the drama. Suffice it to say that Rose has come with a proposition that raises a series of powerful moral, philosophical and political questions.

These include the politics of nuclear power, of course. However, thanks to the intelligence of the writing, the specific conversations about responsibility, sacrifice and mortality take on a resonating, universal significance.

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PANTON’S impressively tight production takes place on designer Karen Tennent’s meticulously detailed cottage kitchen set – which is built on a platform above the stage, for reasons that are successful in both aesthetic and practical terms. The acting, too, is perfectly attuned to the writing.

All three actors are long-standing members of the Dundee Rep Ensemble (Scotland’s only permanent ensemble of professional players), and one can’t help but feel their familiarity with each other is a boon in performing Kirkwood’s play. The trio reflect the complex interpersonal dynamics between the characters with all of the necessary humour, tension and suspicion.

Kirkwood’s often emotive, messily human play asks what we will do to try to secure a decent future for our – that is society’s – children.

In these troubling and dangerous times, her modest drama contains a potent urgency.

Until March 19: dundeerep.co.uk