Given the recent success of Irish plays about sport, it was inevitable that Gaelic football would get its turn. But the clear precedent for this Passion Machine/Andrews Lane production is not such recent hits as Alone It Stands and I Keano, but the Irish sporting ur-play, Paul Mercier's Studs, which put Passion Machine on the map 19 years ago.
Mercier's direction here is reminiscent of the precise, high-energy ensemble style of that production: in a long, and entertaining first scene, the cast of eight play a group of fans on the famous Hill 16 in Croke Park, cheering on their beloved Dublin side. At the same time, playwright Alan Archbold introduces its main character, Sam Maguire, and his problem - that he lives his life through football.
But what also emerges is the extent to which Archbold's script suffers from the same problems as Sam himself: the play is so encased in the football idiom that the human life inside it is obscured. In what first feels like a risky, exciting strategy but ends up being a self-defeating one, the play collapses time. The present-day story is that Sam's wife Mary leaves him, he loses his factory job, and his troubled young daughter Clare finds out she's pregnant. Through flashbacks we meet Sam and Mary at points in their past life.
Meanwhile, Sam gets a new job delivering pizzas, tries to cope with Clare, and has surprising success pulling single ladies given that he's paunchy, balding, and emotionally absent. But all this activity feels sketchy because the characters remain ideas, not fully drawn people: first-time playwright Archbold needed more dramaturgical assistance in achieving a balance between plot, theme, and character.
As a light summer entertainment, this is harmless fun, but one senses that Archbold and Mercier were aiming for something more substantial.
· Open run. Box office: 00 353 1 679 5720.
