Sean Buckley's first play - joint winner of a Verity Bargate award - reveals a good eye for the quirks of human behaviour and a sharp ear for the oddities of speech. But, having pinned down the strangeness of a dysfunctional London-Irish family, Buckley does little to explain what drove them to their state of desperation.
The mother, Maura, is a religious recluse who gazes adoringly at an image of the Sacred Heart when she's not squatting in the bath or the airing cupboard. Her daughter, Anne, is a fugitive from a psychiatric ward. And Maura's son, Declan, turns out to be a bit like Pinter's Aston in The Caretaker: a damaged figure obsessively redecorating a third sibling's kitchen but unable to complete the task.
Of plot there is not a lot: all that really happens is that the family gathers to celebrate Declan's birthday. If, as Buckley hints, religion is the deep-rooted source of their problem, it seems an odd accusation at a time when Irish Catholicism is in retreat before rampant secularism. However, the play is kept afloat by Buckley's gift of the gab and eye for human oddity. There's a very funny scene where an innocent Swiss Presbyterian knocks at Declan's door with a questionnaire, only to find himself ruthlessly interrogated before being dismissed as "a Christian estate agent".
Tessa Walker's production captures well the isolation of these Irish immigrants. Mary Duddy as the maternal recluse, Gary Shelford as Declan and Carolyn Tomkinson as Anne make a plausible trio of misfits, and Mark Huckett pops in to good effect as the bell-pusher. But, while Buckley writes well about the symptoms of derangement, his play would be even better if it analysed its social causes.
· Until July 17. Box office: 0870 990 8454.
