The production budget for Conor McPherson's play is unlikely to bankrupt anyone: three actors, three chairs, and some light so that you can see them. By casting the work as three static monologues, McPherson seems to distil theatre to its original essence, returning to its roots as pure storytelling. Yet despite the oral dexterity of the exercise, I can't help wondering if McPherson's minimalism offers quite enough.
More troublingly, I'm not sure if director Matthew Dunster believes that it does either. Perhaps to compensate for the visual austerity - or maybe just to give the set designer something to do - Dunster frames the actors with three large screens providing simultaneous video relay.
I last encountered something similar at a Coldplay concert, where it was much appreciated at the back of the arena. Whether anybody needs it at the back of the Everyman is another matter. It's a striking technological statement, and very slickly done. But it creates a distractingly split focus for a piece where concentration on the soft, lilting nuance of the words is all. And it destroys the purity of McPherson's theatrical enterprise by introducing its antithesis: film drama. This strange genre-mix enables the actors to keep their intonations natural and their gestures small, but it's the wrong kind of intimacy, like opera singers making use of concealed amplification.
It's a pity, given that the performances are strong: Matthew Dunphy, Ruairi Conaghan and Ciaran McIntyre are very expressive as three drifting figures in youth, middle youth and age who have little in common apart from being attached to the wrong woman. There's a wealth of vitality and fine-grained detail in this acting. Yet if it's all going to be beamed up on camera, you wonder why the performers bother with the inconvenience of sitting on stage at all. Surely it could just as easily be done from the comfort of the dressing room?
· Until March 19. Box office: 0151-709 4776.
