Owen McCafferty is Belfast's chronicler of lost illusions. Closing Time, seen in the National Theatre's Transformations season, dealt with a group of sozzled pipe-dreamers in a derelict boozer. And this latest play, though lighter in tone, is equally impressive in its vivid portrait of four Belfast tilers confronting the vanity of their expectations.
If O'Neill was the inspiration for McCafferty's last play, Mamet is the guiding spirit here. As in American Buffalo, a bungled robbery exposes the frailty of the characters' hopes. Ding Ding, who is on the verge of retirement, coerces Randolph, a young motorbike fanatic, into joining him in the theft of a pile of tiles from their miserly employer. What they don't know is that their two co-workers have had the same idea: Petesy, charmingly known as "shit-for-brains", wants to finance his daughter's trip to France while the moody Socrates hopes the profits will enable him to regain contact with his abandoned son.
In 90 minutes McCafferty works out his plot with deft skill. One particular scene, in which each of the rival twosomes tries to persuade the other to make for the lunchtime pub, is a masterly study of delayed action. But the heist itself is simply a means of exploring the inner lives of four men bound by hard graft, mutual dislike and solitary dreams. And much the most fully-realised character is Socrates, desperately seeking to compensate for his father's desertion of his family. Tearfully reminiscing about his pint-pulling, crowd-pleasing dad, Socrates says there is a big difference between "being a character and having a character"; but his only reward for such emotional candour is to be jeered at by his colleagues.
For a writer who deals in closely-observed Belfast life, McCafferty is strangely evasive about economic facts: you long, for instance, to know how much, or little, these tilers earn. And, although the plotting is good, the climax is oddly abrupt. But Jacob Murray's production skilfully shows the drama erupting through the interstices of actual tiling, and the four actors could hardly be bettered. Patrick O'Kane as Socrates wrings subtly traumatic variations on the guilt-ridden domestic deserter he played in Closing Time. Conleth Hill, reminding me of his nameseake Benny, lends Petesy a rubbery-faced comic expressiveness, especially in his endlessly knowing nods when someone mentions Damien Hirst. There is good work too from Walter McGonagle as the retiring Ding Ding and Paul Dineen as the revved-up Randolph.
But the real credit belongs to McCafferty, who writes lovingly about flawed people, and who reminds us that in Belfast disappointed dreams are not the exclusive property of politicians.
· Until February 22. Box office: 0161-833-9833.
