They always say the second play is the hardest. But Stella Feehily shows that Duck, which wittily dissected Dublin's ladette culture, was no flash in the pan. Her new play, which kicks off the Court's 50th anniversary season, combines a sharp look at the chaos of contemporary sexual mores with a wild surreal humour: imagine Closer with a touch of Lewis Carroll and you get the picture.
Feehily focuses on a group of Dubliners living in a state of noisy desperation. Neil is a TV journalist who, while genuinely shell-shocked by the horrors he has witnessed in Darfur, seeks to escape his nightmares by walking out on his wife and daughter. His new love, Sarah, is a struggling actress reduced to touring in a hip-hop version of Alice in Wonderland. But, while united by panic and desire, Neil and Sarah leave behind them partners who console themselves by exacting merciless revenge.
As in Duck, Feehily reveals a beady eye for the hypocrisies of sex: my favourite moment comes when Sarah's rejected partner, having himself enjoyed a quickie with a ruthless young go-getter, announces: "In my defence, I was trying to reach out to you." But Feehily here goes beyond social observation to paint a picture of a modern Dublin that has reached a state of hedonistic craziness; and the point is underscored through the choric interjections of a female Polish immigrant who views the constant couplings with an exasperated scorn.
It is the effortless mix of the real and the surreal that makes this a remarkable play; and it is no accident that Alice in Wonderland, with its topsy turveydom, is used to express the sense of modern madness. This reaches its high point in a funny, painful scene where Sarah, trapped inside the sweaty costume of the Cheshire Cat, is confronted in her dressing room by Neil's abandoned wife. In one exhilarating moment the scene becomes a comment on the absurdity of theatre and the wild justice of revenge.
If the play has a fault, it is that Neil seems too much of a self-lacerating shit to attract anyone. But Max Stafford-Clark's Out of Joint production is packed with exuberant energy and high-octane performances.
Even if Ewan Stewart can't reconcile one to the agonising Neil, Susan Lynch as the fugitive Sarah, Paul Hickey as her rejected partner, Denise Gough as a rampantly ambitious TV exec and Mossie Smith as the caustic observer are all first-rate. But the great joy is to find Feehily, while exposing the monotony of monogamy, also attacking the madness of a world that idolatrously worships fame, sex and celebrity.
· Until February 11. Box office: 020-7565 5000.
