The most vivid character in Stewart Parker's last, great play is a ghost. Lily Matthews' formidable presence pervades her proudly loyalist Belfast home, which becomes a refuge for four squatters during the Ulster Workers' Council strike of 1974. The friends argue about the past, both personal and political, while trying to envisage a future beyond bombs and reprisals. Lynne Parker's staging, a co-production between Rough Magic and the Lyric, Belfast, makes the appearance of Lily seem entirely credible. Finely tuned to the period, designer Monica Frawley's respectable sitting room is delicately lit by Sinead McKenna. Eleanor Methven is riveting as Lily, disgusted to find her home inhabited by the "idolator" Marion (Kathy Kiera Clarke), a Catholic antiques dealer, for whom the house is "eloquent with the history of this city".
Their sparring reveals Lily's sexual history, a story of puritanical self-loathing. These scenes provide the emotional core, balancing rhetorical flourishes in the arguments between Marion's ex-husband (Richard Clements) and their friends Peter and Ruth. But the hopeful transcendence that the characters reach at the end is not fully achieved, partly because the staging in traverse has not created a sufficient sense of claustrophia in earlier scenes.
The women share stories of thwarted motherhood, of babies abandoned, dead or miscarried, and Parker's caustic dialogue carries this metaphorical weight easily. For a serious play, it is strikingly funny, though that is probably because the bleakness of its political context has been alleviated by hindsight. This production, running in rep with Parker's first play, Spokesong, is a reminder of what Irish theatre lost with his premature death in 1987.
· Until May 17. Box office: 02890 246609. Then at Empty Space, Dublin, May 24-June 15.
