The portents were against this one. Writing a play about a still-living, still-controversial political figure is tricky enough; but when you are pipped to the post by Sebastian Barry, whose Charles Haughey play Hinterland bombed spectacularly, the safest bet might have been for John Breen to give up on Haughey altogether.
But now it has appeared and - wonder of wonders - it is actually quite good. Hardly a classic, but an accessible and surprisingly funny piece of writing that has the potential to become the same kind of populist hit as Breen's last outing, the rugby play Alone It Stands, which is still touring Ireland four years after its premiere.
Wisely, Breen focuses exclusively on Haughey's political life (it was dramatising the man's personal affairs that got Barry into hot water). We start out in the present day on a County Mayo farm, as the disgraced and ailing former taoiseach drops in unexpectedly (by helicopter, terrifically evoked by Sinead McKenna's lighting) on a farmer whose family he has known for generations. A series of flashbacks proceeds, as Haughey and the farmer reflect on the highs and lows of Haughey's career, from the arms-trafficking scandals of the 1970s to the beginning of Haughey's final fall from grace in the early 1990s.
Breen is riffing on some well-known incidents and quotations and, in a weaker production, this could have been theatre for political anoraks: remember when Charlie gave Margaret Thatcher a teapot? But Breen's brisk and clever production for Yew Tree theatre company allows his role-swapping supporting cast of seven to display crack comic timing. Garrett Keogh does a great job projecting Haughey's ambition, gravitas and, in the present-day scenes, moral confusion. In his interactions with the farmer Michael, whose family was ruined by Fianna Fail's broken promises, Haughey is confronted by the fruit of his betrayals.
"Ten years from now and you won't recognise this country," Haughey intones late in the play. A decade later, as Ireland grapples with the changes wrought by a breakneck period of boom and bust ushered in by Haughey's leadership, Charlie feels like the beginning of a vital public reckoning.
· Until tomorrow. Box office: 00 353 1 231 2929. Then touring.
