IF SHE was not so brilliantly talented, you could easily hold a jealous grudge against Liverpool playwright Lizzie Nunnery.

Not only is she a talented folk singer and guitarist, but her ever-emerging skill as a writer is fast seeing Nunnery develop as one of the finest dramatist this city has produced for a generation.

Her latest play takes the very modern subject of immigration with an emotional and psychological examination of the harrowing and often humiliating experience of refugee Canaan and his sometimes shadowy reasons for leaving President Mugabee’s Zimbabwe.

The play is a two hander, with all the dramatic scope and tension such a small cast brings.

Will Johnson’s Canaan brings an unsettling paranoia to the early scenes as he paces around his claustrophobic Toxteth flat, listening to the police sirens, with only his filing cabinet and pack of cards for company.

It is impossible not to sympathise with his plight as he is met with frustration and officialdom at every turn.

“Your leave to remain was never indefinite”, says the bossy caseworker Martha. “Then why do they call it leave to remain?” wonders Canaan as he pleads with her to let him stay.

At this point, it is clear whose side we are on but gradually Martha begins to unravel Canaan’s tales and that is where the play becomes more complex and dark, as we see the two opposing sides become closer.

Both character’s stories merge as the Zimbabwean begins to show his skill as a spinner of yarns.

His descriptions of the brutality of Mugabe’s regime are vivid and believable and both Martha and the audience are drawn in by some of Nunnery’s beautiful imagery, no more so then when Canaan tells Martha how he follows smokers down the street to “breath it in and hold on to it a bit longer”, as he remembers the smell of his murdered wife.

“This not England,” rages Canaan towards the end of this powerful play which is dominated by the brilliant Johnson.

If there is one criticism it is that Allyson Ava-Brown as Martha simply finds it too hard to compete with the mysterious and charismatic Canaan.

Her character, despite her own personal problems and bitterness, seems rather lightweight in comparison, and Ava-Brown is far more effective when depicting Canaan’s wife in the touching dream sequences.

This small detail should not detract from a fantastic, poignant and necessary play which sees Nunnery’s stature grow and grow