Alan Ball is a name that deserves respect. His writing work with American Beauty and Six Feet Under is to be applauded, and he is better than most at looking at dysfunctional societies.

Ball wrote the four short plays that make up Ball Game before he was a household name, and at least that provides some reason as to why the collection is so hit and miss.

But Ball should not shoulder all of the blame for the disaster that is Ball Game, as the production itself is way under par right across the board, failing to lift uninspiring scripts to any great heights.

In Your Mother's Butt, we see a psychologist (Lisa Griffiths) and a client (Gianluigi Carelli) in an intense session looking at the emptiness of life. As the client rattles on about sweaters, shoes and belts, he suddenly recalls a dream that could hold the answers to all of his problems.

Here, Lisa Griffiths is a standout (in fact, her acting is one of the highlights of the night) though the same unfortunately can't be said for Carelli who is, for whatever reason, simply not believable and bumbles his way through the 20 or so minutes the play runs.

The M Word is next up and thank God for that as it is one of the evening's rare highlights. The entire snappy piece is superb, and focuses on a rather bizarre marriage proposal from a professional, intense boyfriend to his equally highly strung girlfriend. The pair enter the negotiating table ahead of the big 'm' word being suggested and it's an hilarious social commentary, highlighted again by Griffiths whose performance is sensational, while Matthew Holmes brings some modest hilarity to the stage.

Holmes is also good in the evening's third pay, Made For A Woman, but the script lets both him and his fellow actor, Alicia Jeffery, down. The play, about the expectations we have in society and essentially an investigation into the 'perfect world' we all apparently desire to live in, really goes nowhere, though it does have a surprise ending. It's really a shrug of the shoulders, "big deal" kind of piece.

The second act of Ball Game is taken up by the hour-long Powerlunch, another social commentary piece that looks at an image-obsessed society and deconstructs it using sex and gender. Here, Carelli is better cast as the waiter and his acting ability is given a better chance to shine, but the piece's other main player - Ona Nurkkala - seems terribly miscast. There's no conviction in her acting, and her performance even gets to the point where it's just plain annoying. She's clearly got some strong acting ability, but when, for example, she delivers the line "it doesn't mean jack shit, asshole", there is just no strength whatsoever.

Powerlunch does contain some nice one-liners which keep the pace going and the spontaneous dance scenes do at least add some flavour to an otherwise drab production.

Ball Game fumbles and bumbles its way to its eventual conclusion and while there's a few laughs here and there, it's certainly not slap of the knee, belly laugh kind of stuff. Nor is it hard-hitting drama, and thought-provoking (which seems to be one of its key intentions) it is not.

Ball is a sensational mind as proven by his later work but these four plays (well, three of them at least) lack the clarity and consistency of his later television and film work.