This solo one-act play by Enda Walsh has taken a circuitous route to Dublin. It played briefly in Cork, to mixed reviews, in 1999 with the author in the title role, and has since been performed to more acclaim in Hungary, Spain and Germany, where Walsh's work is extremely popular. This production by New York-based Origin theatre company is the first staging by an American company of Walsh's work, and has come to Dublin's fringe festival after a well-received off-Broadway run earlier this year.
This staging strengthens the impression from the initial Cork run that the play is not of the same rank as Walsh's Disco Pigs or Bedbound. Still, Origin's cleanly professional production does make for a perversely diverting 50 minutes. George Heslin plays Thomas McGill, a pious thirtysomething who has nominated himself moral guardian of the idyllic Irish town of Inishfree. David DeBeck's well-observed production suggests from the start that all is not right in Thomas's world: the too-small bed on which we discover him sleeping suggests perpetual infantilism, as does his weirdly intimate relationship with his bedridden Mammy. Her voice and selected sound effects are generated by an old-fashioned tape recorder that Thomas carries around with him on a strap, a canny indication of his need to control his world.
He makes his rounds through the town, savouring cheesecake in the local cafe and buying Jammy Dodgers for Mammy. But his darker side gradually emerges: he has kicked a dog to death, and we find out after the event that a little offstage argument with a mechanic ended with Thomas beating the man to a pulp.
Linguistically dazzling stories of mangled psyches are Walsh's stock-in-trade, but though the language is beautifully wrought here, the play feels too short to support the arc of character development that he is attempting. And DeBeck's production could exaggerate the shifts in tone more: as it stands, the play's extreme ending doesn't feel justified. Heslin makes a convincing sociopath, but he needs to be stretched a bit further.
· Until October 5. Box office: 00 353 1 677 8511.
