Gary Mitchell has virtually created his own theatrical genre: the Northern Irish Protestant thriller. But whereas last year's The Force of Change was about collusion between cop and criminal, this play is about collision within the Ulster Defence Association. And the question it chillingly poses is how, having once indoctrinated the young in the virtues of the cause, do you then persuade them to give peace a chance?
Mitchell's setting, as usual, is working-class north Belfast. His heroes, the married Kyle and the fearsome Freddie, are best mates who have done some unorthodox fundraising for the UDA. But Freddie's wildness leads to their gang being banned from a loyalist club. The price of their return is for them to bring some anti-peace process renegades into line. Kyle sees that in the new political climate they have no choice; Freddie, whose hatred is reserved for Catholics, refuses to toe the line, with predictably violent consequences.
Written before The Force of Change, this play doesn't have its successor's structural tightness. But Mitchell unerringly puts his finger on the problems raised by the peace process: that it leads to brutal in-fighting and that loyalist adherents have to deny everything they've been taught. The play's best scenes show Larry, a practised recruiting officer of young paramilitaries who is now a fundraiser for a politician, grappling with the impossible task of trying to turn the tide. As he explains to the politician who needs results, and money, fast: "Maybe I can't unconvince these men about the struggle because I was so fucking right the first time."
Mitchell's gift is for making sharp political points within a thriller format, and the tension steadily mounts as a robbery at the club leads Kyle to turn on Freddie and try to persuade him to hand over the money. Persuasion, however, consists of back room torture with a thuggish heavy offering to break Freddie's legs. At one point you get a shocking image of how loyalist violence has been turned inwards as all four men in the room lunge at each other's throats.
Even if the constant scene changes give the play a televisual rhythm, John Shehan's production, originating at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, has a gathering momentum, and the cast performs with deadly accuracy. My favourite performance came from Dessie Gallagher as the club's security man, who turns from an incompetent dimwit into a figure of real menace. But there is also excellent work from Robert Donovan as Kyle, Michael Liebmann as Freddie and Simon Wolfe as their former mentor torn between rage and real politik. An engrossing evening.
Until October 13. Box office: 020-7328 1000.
