Jimmy Fay's production of Sheridan's 1777 comedy of manners certainly makes a strong physical impression. Ferdia Murphy's all-white box set and raked floor skews natural perspective; it is brightly lit by Paul Keogan, though no lighting instruments are visible; and Léonore McDonagh's gaudy, decadent costumes exaggerate period styles to the point that some of the characters (particularly the women) look oddly shaped and vaguely ridiculous.
This gives the effect of an animated comic strip, which further emphasises the stylistic strangeness to contemporary sensibilities of Sheridan's play, one that mingles multiple plots and intrigues without giving much textual indication of which story lines are meant to dominate.
The responsibility of helping today's audiences find their way through the material should lie with the director, but Fay has remained faithful to his dispiriting assertion in a pre-production interview that "you don't have to do a lot of work with the play". The production indeed shows little evidence of directorial interpretation or intervention.
While gossip, backbiting, and spin are certainly relevant themes in today's Ireland, there is no sense of connection between Sheridan's world and our own. Many fine actors are on familiar form here - left to their own devices, one suspects, or on auto-pilot.
As one scene drags into another, we are left to wonder at apparently random decisions about voices (why are some Irish actors affecting English accents while others retain their natural Irish, English and American ones?), wigs (uniformly hideous, though a few characters inexplicably don't have to wear them), and makeup (if the most insincere characters are wearing white-face, then why is the most insidious liar, Joseph, left au naturel?).
Something we hoped would become a thing of the past has reappeared under the new Abbey regime: a production that mistakes monumental design for directorial concept.
· Until January 27. Box office: 353 1 878 7222.
