A Whistle in the Dark Royal Exchange, Manchester, until 25 March. Box office: 0161 833 9833
This is a young man's play, full of energy and passion. Tom Murphy was 25 when he wrote it, nearly half-a-century ago, when English boarding houses still displayed signs warning: 'No blacks, no Irish, no dogs'.
The playwright from County Galway set the action in Coventry, among a group of brothers over from Ireland to find work. They struggle to survive, to understand the world in which they find themselves and to create a place for themselves within it. It is not a pretty sight. Identity is forged through conflict: brother challenges brother; father menaces son; husband lashes out at wife. Then there is the bloody feud with another band of Irish brothers.
Laurie Dennett's design is a 1961 time capsule. Jacob Murray's direction does full justice to the raw emotions that flash from the writing. The actors are as convincing as possible (accents aside), the action is not driven by character, but by the need to carry forward a plot that combines elements from westerns, Oedipus and Hamlet, with a bit of DH Lawrence thrown in.
This is indeed a young man's play; it confuses sentimentality with compassion and justification with understanding. The whole is simplistic but vivid; talent shines through in the audacity of the subject, the building of tension and the crispness of the dialogue.
