Bernard Farrell's new play, like its main character, has commitment problems. It is a domestic comedy and a drama about a changing society, but it's also an Alzheimer's play, a relationship play and a woman's play. It is calibrated for easy laughs, but the playwright never takes a stand on the selfishness and moral ambiguity with which most of the characters behave. It is a bunch of observations and character sketches passed off as wry commentary on contemporary Irish life, but it lacks specificity and a sense of point or purpose.
Fortyish Anna was devoted to her shop owner father Stephen, and, on the day of his funeral, thinks back on her life through flashbacks impressively staged by director Mark Lambert. Much of the first act's action has to do with her abortive wedding. Ten years earlier she was to marry a furniture maker and move to Finland, but her harridan mother Clara and shrewish sister Isobel manipulate her into leaving him at the altar so that she will stay at home and mind the shop. A parallel plot runs in the play's "real time": Clara discovers love letters to her dead husband hidden around the house, but Anna spins a story, which she clearly believes, about how the letters were not really evidence of an affair.
Two hours of stage action, and another mind-blowingly well-staged set shift later, a deus ex machina arrives in the form of a pretty female patron of the health club that Isobel and her husband have built where the shop used to be. She has news for Anna that wraps everything up in an ending that relies heavily on convenience.
The final act, in particular, is ludicrous stuff, but it does not seem to be intended as comedy - it's more of a heartwarming, good-people-win-out-in-the-end finish. But what of Stephen's affair? What of the self-serving family members making a mint with their gym? Why does Anna deserve a happy ending if she has shown no sign of personal initiative, much less a personality, at any point during the play?
Certain sectors of the wider Irish audience clearly aren't bothered by questions like these. This is the 10th Farrell play that the Abbey has staged - expensively, by the looks and size of the production.
· Until April 20. Box office: 00 353 1 878 7222.
