Three years ago Lynne Parker directed Linda McLean's Scots version of this Finnish play at the Traverse in Edinburgh. That production met with considerable acclaim. Now she's staging the work in Dublin with her own company, Rough Magic, and it doesn't work. The cultural gap is now too great: not only are Irish actors speaking in Scots accents, but the geographical and sociopolitical references are all Finnish, from Laura Ruohonen's original work. The result feels overcomplicated and too distant.
There are parallels between the three cultures - small, postcolonial, linguistically unique - and these feed into one of the play's main themes: loneliness. But in order for us to make those connections, we need to be convinced by the play's central love story between an elderly woman and a twentysomething drifter.
Rosaleen Linehan and Fergal McElherron only skim the surface of this relationship. Many crucial moments are covered too rapidly in the first act, and it's late in the second when the pair really connect. What's more, the three actors playing minor parts never seem particularly at ease.
Ruohonen and McLean haven't made it easy for production teams: a magic-realist approach seems called for to handle the many quick-change entrances and exits, and the jumps in location. But much of Parker's surprisingly awkward production is rooted in naturalism, which makes the play appear contrived rather than quirky.
Blaithin Sheerin's set of tall white panels and platforms errs in the other direction: what was probably intended to give a sense of wide-open, snowdrifted spaces doesn't provide enough information about the basic standard of Olga and Rundis's lives.
· Until November 29. Box office: 00 353 1 881 9613.
