What with reduced Shakespeare and condensed Beckett and reduced-fat snacks in the bar, there isn't always a lot to get your teeth into at the theatre. This 90-minute whiz through 33 years of the history of Northern Ireland from 1969 to the present day is small, but not so perfectly formed as to be really satisfying. What can you say about a show that turns three decades of murder, terror, tragedy and struggle into something charming, a sort of Stones in His Pockets played out before a political back drop?
Except there is not enough political comment to make it either informative or meaningful. Internment, the Anglo-Irish agreement, Bobby Sands's hunger strike, power sharing and supergrasses are all part of the scenery, but nothing more. If you entered the theatre knowing little about the Troubles, you would come out none the wiser. The piece spends so much time trying to offend nobody and entertain everybody it ends up being completely anodyne.
What it does succeed in, at least to some extent, is showing how the lives of ordinary people living in Belfast have been affected by the Troubles. Gerry Courtney is at the Royal Victoria Hospital awaiting the birth of his second child and first son, Colm, when the Troubles begin - out of nowhere as far as this show is concerned, for there is no time wasted on back-history. Gerry thinks the whole thing will be sorted out by the time he gets the baby home, but much as he would like to just get on with the business of raising his kids on the Catholic estate where he lives, he soon finds himself manning the barricades and accidentally interned in Long Kesh along with his friends Felix and Fireball, two colourful Irish stereotypes of the kind that so often pop up in modern Irish drama.
Even at 90 minutes, the piece is pretty laboured, but it is carried by the quickfire energies of its cast of three - Ivan Little, Alan McKee and Conor Grimes - who are so sparky and unaffected that they make you want to believe that this evening is more than it really is.
· Until June 28. Box office: 020-7328 1000.
