In Unprotected (2006), Esther Wilson bruisingly examined the realities of street prostitution. Now, with this Everyman and Shared Experience co-production directed by Polly Teale, the writer amplifies other seldom-remarked female voices: those of mothers to servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq. Inspired by in-depth interviews, some with women from the organisation Military Families Against the War (MFAW), Ten Tiny Toes is emotionally incendiary, even if its passionately expressed point of view is restricted.

Michael, 23, is serving in Iraq. At home in Liverpool his mother, Gill, scours the media for news of him. Chris, frustrated by a dead-end job and tempted by the promise of adventure in glossy recruitment ads, follows his older brother into the Army. When, barely out of training, Chris is killed in Basra, Gill's grief is accompanied by a desperate need to make sense of his death. Increasingly politicised, she finds her family imploding as her search for answers brings her into conflict with her traumatised surviving son and her husband.

The rage and agony of Gill and the other bereaved mothers with whom she joins in protest is hugely affecting, and Wilson forcefully highlights the appalling conditions and scandalously inadequate equipment with which the troops often have to contend. But it's a shame that there aren't more strands to the debate. “We wouldn't need to help them rebuild if we hadn't razed the place to the ground in the first place,” says one woman of the Army's continued presence in Iraq. True, but having contributed to the mess, can Britain morally walk away from it?

“Send your lads to be maimed or killed,” Gill addresses an absent Tony Blair at a MFAW peace camp. “I want to keep mine safe.” Wholly and heartbreakingly understandable; but while the decision to go to war in Iraq wasn't made by her or her sons, Chris did choose to join up. And he did so long after the fallacy of WMDs had been exposed - and despite his damaged brother's warnings.

The relationship between misplaced notions of masculinity and the appeal of soldiering is only glanced at. And an upper-class couple who cling to their pride in their dead officer son's career are drawn with such stereotypical imprecision that they make little impact. Teale's production is potent and well acted, particularly by Lisa Parry as Gill and David Lyons as Michael, but the play's anti-war stance would have been strengthened by better-argued opposition.

Box office: 0151-709 4776, to July 5

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