Irish drama is one long masculine identity crisis communicated via logorrhea. For the past 100 years, playwrights have charted the nation's efforts towards self-realisation through male characters whose verbal abilities mask a lack of a firm identity: Christy Mahon, Captain Boyle, Casimir in Friel's Aristocrats, Tom Murphy's deflated returned immigrants, Conor McPherson's monologuists, Mark O'Rowe's shite-talking Dubliners.
In his first full-length play, produced by Rough Magic Theatre Company, Gerald Murphy interestingly manipulates this theme by creating four working-class male characters who don't even have the gift of the gab on their side. Dad Eddie has asked his three grown sons to assemble at the eldest, Bren's, house, and middle brother Andy is convinced it's because their sick mother has come into money that she's going to pass on to the family. Soon we discover that none of this is true, and that all are in dire personal and financial straits.
The portraits here are well drawn, and we see with sad clarity how the emotional deprivation of their upbringing has produced three young men who are unprepared to function as adults. The plotting is extremely efficient but listening to three of the four characters hem and haw their way towards truth-telling in real time starts to feel schematic. For that reason the most interesting character ends up being Bren; though he doesn't get his big confessional moment, Murphy and director Lynne Parker tell us everything we need to know through the character's incessant tidying and his not-so-secret obsession with online porn. Vincent McCabe feels uncertain as Eddie, but Joe Hanley, Aidan Kell and Barry Ward are excellent as the sons. A very promising debut.
· Until March 13. Box office: 00 353-1881 9613.
