RON Rose calls himself "the token woman writer", and this playwright from a South Yorkshire family of aunts and sisters admits to "finding women more interesting than men" as a subject matter.

In his new maternity ward drama, Oh Baby!, women outnumber men three to one in the cast list and there are six women's roles to be shared out by comparison with three men's parts (all played by York Theatre Royal favourite Martin Barrass in assorted situations of male inadequacy).

Last night's audience was dominated by women too - and I thought the days had gone when men didn't attend births.

Yet men will enjoy Rose's prickly, emotional roller-coaster comedy, even if it is often a humiliating experience for the hairier sex - but then so are plenty of John Godber's roles, and so Godber directs Oh Baby! with empathy rather than sympathy.

Rose follows the twists and turns in four births: three human and one troublesome pregnancy of an all-singing, all-dancing maternity ward that will replace the run-down cottage hospital where the sharp-tongued, yet kindly, Jan (the outstanding Sarah Parks) is the matriarch who oversees the "awesome" miracle of 2,200 births a year.

In her team are stoical, experienced midwife Diane (Jackie Lye) and perky student midwife (notable new discovery Amy Thompson). Rugby-top wearing Doctor Taylor (Barrass, part one) has his roving eye on her, but his comeuppance will provide one of the night's comic high points in the great tradition of clothes-shredding English farce.

There is a soap opera adrenaline to Rose's writing, not only in the subplot involving hospital funding and resources but also, and indeed more so, in the intertwining stories of the three mothers-to-be. One is a "multi", the larger-than-life, phlegmatic Jane (Parks' second role), who desperately craves a daughter to add to her six boys and a "useless" husband (Inky, Barrass, part two). The second, in the one trite strand of Rose's socially aware story, is junkie prostitute Sarah (Thompson), who is as much hooked on her abusive pimp boyfriend Kev (Barrass, part three) as she is on heroin.

The third is the hospital's martinet administrator, the hard-on-the-outside but emotionally brittle Carol, for whom tragedy lies in store as Oh Baby! swings back and forth between highs and lows.

Rose paints his canvas with broad strokes, his humour strong on put-downs, cheek and the common touch, but countered by a serious undercurrent, an admiration for the abiding qualities of midwives under duress.

Box office: 01482 323638

Updated: 09:52 Tuesday, July 22, 2003