As new Irish playwriting lies dormant, this is shaping up as an excellent year for the reconsideration of modern and contemporary British plays in Ireland: there have been new productions of Caryl Churchill, Martin Crimp and Gregory Burke - and now this exemplary staging of Edward Bond's rarely seen 1956 masterpiece.
Jimmy Fay's mature, respectful production reveals much more than a play about the murder of a baby. It is, in fact, a play about love. Pam (Eileen Walsh) picks up Len (Tom Vaughan Lawlor) for sex but soon tires of him, falling instead for his brutish acquaintance Fred (Rory Keenan).
As with everything in this intricately constructed play, it is no coincidence that everyone's name sounds like a grunt. Bond demonstrates the depths to which humans can sink under conditions of societal and economic deprivation. Loving Fred becomes the only thing Pam has to hold on to, even while he does time for stoning to death the baby that may or may not be his.
Len insinuates himself into Pam's life by lodging in her family home, where, in darkly funny scenes, it is revealed that her parents (Paul Moriarty and Eleanor Methven) have cohabited for decades without communicating. In the shocking moral void that Bond describes, Len's devotion to Pam takes on an heroic quality. It is a testament to the excellence of production and performers that the daringly silent final scene gives the hint of hope that Bond says he was aiming for.
The actors' south London accents are so extreme they are sometimes hard to understand, and early on they lapse into a distracting sing-song cadence. As the momentum and intensity build, however, their playing takes on its own compelling rhythm. Powerful stuff.
· Until May 26. Box office: +353 1 878 7222.
