Eight months ago, Gary Mitchell and his family were driven out of their neighbourhood by Unionist paramilitaries angered by Mitchell's success as a playwright who focuses on the internal violence in his Protestant community. Now Mitchell's new play about this trauma is being produced by Northern Ireland's most unashamedly nationalist theatre company, Dubbeljoint. It's a huge shame, however, that the real drama in this story stops here.
The play suffers from over-simplification, with the intrigue and complexity we associate with Mitchell's best writing only appearing in its final 10 minutes; Pam Brighton's production has a wooden, amateurish feel.
Tony is a gormless 17-year-old deciding what to do with his life. His father, Charlie, left the UDA in the 1990s and is now a cuckolded weakling; his uncle Geordie is a rich and potent UDA hardman. Faster than you can say Sky News, Geordie transforms Tony into a balaclava-clad street thug, with the encouragement of Tony's gran, Maud, who is kept in espadrilles and bingo nights by Geordie's weekly wads of cash.
This kind of family-based corruption doubtless exists in the Unionist community. Mitchell weakens his play, however, by making so many of his characters amoral and stupid. And when Charlie states outright that no such activity goes on in the nationalist community because "the IRA has disbanded", Mitchell sinks to the level of unsupportable propaganda.
It is only in Charlie and Geordie's final face-off that the real questions start to be asked: is an escape from this cycle of violence possible, what role did their father's departure from the UDA play in the sons' parted ways, and has Charlie's split from the family dealt him a death sentence?
Lalor Roddy is excellent, if under-used, as Charlie, but Kieran Lagan and Sam Murdock lack substance as Tony and Geordie, and Eileen Pollack tries to hide Maud's lack of character development by overacting.
· Until September 9. Box office: 028-9020 2222. Then touring.
