I confess that my ribs remained untickled by the hugely popular French film, Le Dîner de Cons. But if Ronald Harwood's adaptation of the original Francis Veber play makes me laugh it is, I suspect, for two reasons. One is that farce, more than any other form, depends on audience complicity. The other is the beguiling presence of Ardal O'Hanlon as the story's hapless hero.
Veber's farce is built on a familiar idea: that of the well-meaning guest who spreads disruptive chaos. In this case the hero is a man who builds matchstick models of public buildings and who is the latest in a long series of "twats" - the word constantly used in Harwood's version - invited by a group of Parisians to a humiliating weekly dinner. On this occasion, however, the guest turns up at his publisher-host's apartment and proceeds to throw his ailing marriage, his collapsing back and even his tax-evading tactics into ever greater confusion.
In all honesty, it is a bit of a one-joke play. What makes it unusual, however, is that it reverses many of the traditional expectations of French farce. Instead of destroying the household gods, it ends up championing marriage. And, rather than heartlessly exploiting the nerdish outsider, it suggests he is a far better man than his cruel host.
This is what makes O'Hanlon - a practised stand-up comedian but a theatrical debutant - so good. With shoulders protectively bunched and clad in a suit that seems one size too small, he looks odd without being grotesque. And everything he does is motivated by fellow-feeling for his host. When the shattered publisher learns that his wife has left him, the seated O'Hanlon very slowly crosses one leg over another in a gesture of delicate sympathy. And as his host, suffering from a slipped disc, struggles to achieve the bedroom, O'Hanlon guides him like a nervous mariner docking a wayward ship. The performance is not only very funny, it grasps the key point that this is a play about the triumph of goodness.
The idea is reinforced in Robin Lefevre's production in several ways. Risteard Cooper plays the host as a figure of armour-plated egoism. And there is an exquisite cameo from John Kavanagh as a cuckolded tax-inspector who greets the news of his wife's infidelity with the words, "I've recorded the ice-skating for you." Even if the excellent Fiona Bell is sadly wasted as the publisher's wife this remains a rare theatrical specimen: a French farce with a heart.
· Until November 9. Box office: 00 353 1 874 4045.
