"Everything is shit" is a critic-baiting opening line, but Robert Massey happily rises above his own assessment with an entertaining first play about behind-the-scenes backstabbing in the world of professional sales. The strength of the play is Massey's first-hand experience of his subject - he works as a sales manager - combined with an admirably dispassionate portrayal of characters who are all, even the sympathetic ones, ultimately out for themselves.
The best scenes are those in which Massey shows off his insider status: the shark salesman teaching his callow recruit how to "suck the lemon" (draw lips back in a grimace, intake breath, shake head); the useless junior salesman disclosing how he is strategically underachieving in order to fast-track a move into management.
The play makes a tricky shift at the end of the first act, however, when the down-and-out veteran John confesses a dark secret from his past involving the sexual advances of a male client. More care needed to be taken in order for this scene not to come across as homophobic: having played everything thus far for broad laughs, director Breda Cashe is unable to modulate the tone, and the loud guffaws of the audience at John's disclosure cast a nasty, conservative pall.
This production appears to have suffered in its transfer from a smaller black-box space: it all proceeds at the same loping pace when a heightening tempo of farce would have served better. The actors, too, all play one note, and sometimes the wrong one. It would make more sense for Stephen Kelly to portray the recruit Alan as nervously high-strung rather than gormless, for example.
Massey needs more experience (and a better production) to get close to the David Mamet territory he's clearly aiming for, but this is a strong opening gambit.
· Until April 22. Box office: (353) 1 679 5720.
