Truthspeak, performed at Pembroke New Cellars, is a split sequence of two, half-hour pieces of new writing. From Guy Clark's realist play about a mutinous press to Ellen Robertson's devised piece on homelessness, this is an hour of drama that attempts to tackle big 'issues'.

In Clark's No Comment, the first of the two, the media world is peopled by frenzied hacks and sensational stories are swept up quicker than you can say 'libel law'. Journalists, frothing at the mouth, toss aside nuance and go for straight for the jugular. In fact, their bull-in-a-china-shop approach seems strikingly similar to what I saw last night.   

Plays involving rape charges require some realism and some subtlety, especially if they are so obviously based on Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged rape of Nafissatou Diallo. Cameron Blake, Clark’s modern-day martyr, is a lustful CEO who is accused of raping a hotel maid. When the journalist Sam Taylor declares, ‘He’s not going to be convicted’, his co-worker Alice tells him, ‘There would be a bloody uproar if they didn’t.’ Would there really?

Clark may not know how things work in a newsroom or a court, but he must surely realise the sensitivity of the "issue" he’s chosen to dedicate his pen to. Kay Dent did an excellent job of characterising the inexplicably horrible Alice, and Luke Sumner roused a few laughs as the ‘little bit psychic’ Neil, but even a strong cast couldn’t save this play from its own clumsy hectoring. Clark is evidently not talentless, but in his haste to 'vindicate’ victims of the press, he forgot to add some much-needed plausibility.

In a totally different vein, Ellen Robertson’s A Civilised Society was an experimental and ambitious piece about homelessness. The stage transitioned smoothly from a room full of newspaper clippings to a litter-strewn street, as four homeless characters playfully depicted different approaches to this ‘untreated symptom of inequality’ in a three-stage "game".

Obviously influenced by Beckett, Robertson was at her best when she moved away from non-sequiturs into a sequence of surreal, comic set pieces. These included a refreshing depiction of a ‘benevolent’ government’s approach to homelessness, complete with alliterative campaign slogans such as ‘Hold a Homeless Person’s Hand’. A fake reality TV show was inventively staged using a projected video alongside real-time dialogue. Chris Born was a versatile performer, shifting convincingly from a smarmy politician to ‘Mike’, the disgruntled rough-sleeper. His dialogue with Lanikai Krishnadasan Torrens, playing a patronising ‘non-homeless’ woman, was brilliantly comic.

Sadly, A Civilised Society came dangerously close melodrama in the final scene, as a tearful speech-writer (played by Kay Dent) recounted spending a few hours pretending to be homeless. The didacticism felt superfluous: the dark irony of the ‘game’ of solving homelessness was enough to make Robertson’s point for her.

Though the earnestness of these two plays was laudable, often a toothpick is better than a sledgehammer. The sad truth is that, even if you’re looking for a neat conclusion – a moral lesson, perhaps – some things are better left unsaid.