Rosemary Jenkinson's new play for Rough Magic, part of the Dublin theatre festival, takes place in working-class loyalist Belfast during the run-up to the annual "boney" - the traditional bonfires on the night before the July 12 Protestant celebrations. Blockheaded Tommy is trying to raise the £2,000 he owes the local UDA lords, while his glammed-up sister Leanne compulsively cleans the flat but never goes out. Davey, a new hard man on the block, insinuates himself into their lives.
We've seen this kind of material before in many a Gary Mitchell thriller. The twist here is that Jenkinson's play is meant to be a comedy, but how it was ever supposed to work on stage is hard to fathom. The internal life of the loyalist community is still so unknown as to be exotic to many Irish people, yet Jenkinson assumes a complicit audience who can laugh with wry recognition at people who are described as pig-ignorant, incestuous, lawless rapists. There is occasional mordant humour in the characters' offhand treatment of violent behaviour, but most of the jokes are just plain lame.
Lynne Parker's production adds to the confusion. The object, presumably, was to start out in a world of relative psychological credibility and then reveal things to be spinning out of control. But the characters are so damaged that the initial surface-level believability feels retrospectively like a blind alley. The actors come across as overwhelmed by the demands the script places on them - Gerard Jordan in particular seems as confused as we are by Davey's ability to abandon his beliefs on a dime. What was the point of this exercise?
· Until October 14. Box office: 353 1 881 9613
