VERY few writers successfully straddle the gap between the novel and the stage, and Maeve Binchy's bias is obviously towards the former. Her sense of structure, however, her eye for people's foibles and ear for their speech, do create, a platform of at least acceptability for her occasional forays into play form, and End of Term, a lengthy one act playing at lunchtime this week, is easy to relax into.

The scene is a staff room in a convent school for girls, and three harassed women teachers are trying to complete their end of term reports. Their characters are deftly drawn through shared intimacies, while a bustling martinet nun pesters them. It is completely naturalistic on a very small scale until a situation arises concerning a problem pupil who lobs a psychological grenade into their midst.

This central situation teeters on the edge of melodrama, and indeed of probability, as the pathological girl and her inept father dictate the flow of events. But the author's sympathy for her characters contains one's slide into scepticism, and good acting by a committed cast retains audience involvement to the down beat ending. Mary Moynihan, Rita Hamill and Margaret Toomey are excellent as the teachers, and Louise Lowe is persuasively unattractive as the viper in their collective bosom.