Donal O'Kelly's timely new play dives straight into current debates about the legitimacy and legacy of the 1916 Easter Rising. O'Kelly creates a sophisticated and engaging historical narrative that underlines the humanity, fallibility and idealism of the Rising leaders Connolly, Clarke, Pearse and Plunkett. Attempts to draw the story into the present, and to highlight the role of women in the Rising, are less successful; O'Kelly and Calypso Productions have bitten off more issues than they can chew.
A too-quick contemporary episode introduces a young woman, Elizabeth, gripped by a strange malady called "historialysis" - she is framed as the Irish every-person who has not faced the violent history of the country's birth.
Elizabeth becomes the real-life figure of Elizabeth O'Farrell, the nurse who carried the white flag when the rebels surrendered. It's a deft narrative stroke via which O'Kelly moves directly into the failing heart of the Rising on Easter weekend 1916, and then doubles back again to fill in the background leading up to the insurrection. The leaders' stories are told engagingly - but writing the play for only one female actor, who embodies a series of similar wives and lovers, hardly seems the best way to highlight women's place in history. Mary Murray shines none the less, as do the remaining multicultural cast of 10 men. Though using a failed-motherhood metaphor undermines the apparent feminist agenda, O'Kelly ends the play on a chillingly anti-heroic note - if his goal was to get people thinking, he has achieved it.
· Until May 20. Box office: 353 1453 5984
