Phillip McMahon's debut is sure to make anyone over the age of 25 feel old. An award-winner in last year's Dublin Fringe festival, his play follows best friends Danny and Chantelle from their council flats through a drug-fuelled night on the town. The precedents in recent Irish theatre are clear: in subject matter, form (overlapping direct address monologues with embodied scenes), and roller-coaster-ride feel, the play echoes both Enda Walsh and Mark O'Rowe. McMahon's voice is gentler than his predecessors, however, and his focus more squarely on the psychology and emotional entanglement of his protagonists. The subtext is that Chantelle is in love with Danny, but he is gay - though this is never directly stated. She hilariously describes scaring off his last girlfriend, but is angered when another friend calls this "marking her territory". Danny happily reports walking arm in arm with his mate Steo, but reacts violently when Steo reminds him that they kissed.
The fact that their intimacy will not be sustainable much longer gives Danny and Chantelle's friendship a sweet and idyllic quality that is fully realised in McMahon and Georgina McKevitt's engaging performances. This contrasts productively with the play's depiction of the hedonism of youth culture, which is frank and will doubtless shock some: coarse language, social activity centered on drugs, throwaway attitudes to casual sex. What McMahon describes, though, feels socially accurate: there is a bracing honesty here, although the show probably fitted better in its original setting - the "PoD" nightclub amid the Fringe frenzy - than in this traditionally theatrical context.
Deirdre Molloy's direction ably suggests the many stops on this picaresque journey and underlines the multi-layered intensity of the relationships. There is a liveliness and topicality here that has been lacking from much recent Irish theatre: McMahon and his collaborators are talents to watch.
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