Fresh from directing two actors in multi-faceted roles in Stones in his Pockets, Ian McElhinney steps into the breach himself, playing the two central characters of poet John Hewitt and his wife Roberta, as well as a gallery of friends, family and foes, and emotional and cultural ancestors in this richly textured one-man show.

With valuable input from Tinderbox artistic director Stephen Wright, this inspiring piece has taken on a new lease of life since it was premiered at the 1997 Hewitt Summer School. In the atmospheric Irish Linen Centre and Museum, watched over by portraits of the men who would have shaped the writings and career of one of Ulster's most distinguished radicals and dissenters, an evening in the company of McElhinney's spikily witty Hewitt and his delightfully self-effacing wife Roberta, is a rewarding experience.

Out of Hewitt's long, turbulent, prolific life and career, McElhinney has culled some of the best and least-known incidents. But what provide the sparks that ignite the dramatic fire are Roberta's unpublished diaries, which celebrate the best of times with an almost child-like delight and illuminate the dark corners of disappointment and disillusion, which others close to him did not - or chose not - to see. There are memorable portrayals of the child Hewitt walking to school with his adored father, the early days of the marriage when refugees from the Spanish Civil War were given shelter in their cramped home, the heady weekend retreats to the Glens of Antrim, the "dislocated assault" by the City Fathers in their rejection of his application for director of the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery and the sudden death of Roberta, whose final posthumous gift is to jolt him out of the cave of mourning and into the unexpected Indian summer of his poetic life.

Runs today and tomorrow.