Semper Fi's 45-minute long production for the Dublin fringe festival uses an infamous incident of Irish theatrical censorship as a jumping-off point for a compellingly seedy meditation on societal hypocrisy. In 1957, the Pike Theatre's Irish premiere of Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo was shut down because the appearance of a condom onstage broke a 19th-century law, and a public furore broke out. Paul Walker's new play is set several months after the controversy, and spins around a fictional scandal about a well-known politician hanging himself after photographs of him with a prostitute were published in the papers.
It is the brilliantly detailed atmospherics of Karl Shiels's production that make it unique. The audience of 14 are split into two groups, led into opposite sides of a public convenience, and ordered sternly to line up against a wall. Each group watches half the plot played out inches from their faces, and then switches places to see the other half. The fun is in not knowing not only what is going to happen next, but what is happening next door, and how it all fits together.
In the Ladies, pretty hooker Emily meets Billy, whom we first believe to be her trick, but turns out to be a photographer plotting with her to set up a politician in a sex scam - or so we think. In the Gents, Mr X arrives to hire Emily's services from her husband and procurer John. It all comes together when it is revealed that Mr X and Billy are actually conspiritors in a plot to avenge Billy's father - a politician whom Emily and John had previously framed.
Lighting designer Sinead McKenna and sound designer Ivan Birthistle create a creepily embracing experience: shafts of light bounce off mirrors and isolate actors' faces, the sound of someone running by extends from one vignette to the other.
It all gets a bit gory in the end - head in a bag, anyone? - but the immediacy of the experience is all part of Semper Fi's central point: that society loves the titillation of a scandal, as long as we can pontificate about it from a distance. It is harder to judge when you're wiping fake blood from your eye.
· Until 12 October. Box office: 00 353 1 677 8511.
