Michel Tremblay's homage to his mother, written in 1998 and here being given its European premiere, says as much about the writer as its subject: her storytelling abilities, we discover, inspired him to take his career path. For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again is a sweet, simple, unchallenging dramatic miniature. The narrator enters and addresses the audience directly, informing us that what we are going to see tonight is not one of the great works of dramatic literature, no Hamlet or Medea or Three Sisters. It is the story of an ordinary woman whom he calls back from the dead so that he can play back remembered interactions from his younger life.
The theme is subjectivity and theatricality: already, aged 10, the boy is noting how his mother's stories get bigger and more elaborate the more she tells them. When they discuss books he marvels at her ability to bring them to life, but quibbles with what she makes of them. Her imitations of her loathed sister-in-law are more entertaining than the woman herself. The most moving of these scenes is at the centre of Maria McDermottroe's marvellous performance: as she quietly admires a favourite television actor she wonders if he ever thinks about who is on the other side of the screen.
Gordon McCall's staging is self-consciously static: the lighting isolates a dark wood table and the two actors group around it for each of the vignettes. The focus therefore falls on performance and language, but the latter is less enticing than one would have hoped. Linda Gaboriau's translation comes across as standard spoken English, rather than anything approximating to the working-class Québecois dialect for which Tremblay is famous.
McDermottroe's performance therefore grounds and centres the evening, with Des Cave providing solid support in the much less challenging role of the son - his job is to prompt and listen. Interest flags about halfway through the long one act, but the penultimate scene, in which the son and the seriously ill mother finally open up to each other, is fiercely moving, and the final moments bring all the evening's ideas together, as the son gives his mother the grand, theatrical and imaginary send-off he wishes he could actually have provided for her. These closing moments, though, felt rushed: even five more seconds to linger on the image might have transformed it into the coup de theatre it is so obviously designed to be.
· Until March 9. Box office: 00 353 1 878 7222.
