Out in the Cold takes place in the cool-store chambers of a freezing works where the permanent workers spend the season in sub-zero temperatures and haven't seen a summer for years. And they won't until they retire - unless mechanisation makes them redundant. Into this environment of macho chauvinism comes a solo mother disguised as a man, desperate for a little extra money.
The comedy which arises from the presence of Judy in a man's world, though irresistibly funny, is also not a little uncomfortable, and leads to a moving conclusion showing how her fellow-workers' inhumanity is a defence against intolerable working conditions, and no indication of their real nature.
As in his enormously successful first play, Foreskin's Lament, Greg McGee uses comedy to sharpen the edge of our understanding of the causes of the male chauvinism in our society.