For too long, Ireland has serviced the new playwriting circuit via its own writers, eschewing productions of British and continental work, but 2005 looks like it will be a breakthrough year.
In these first few months alone there are premieres of plays by Jan Fosse and Shelagh Stephenson, and upstart company Randolf SD make a strong fist of Welsh writer Gary Owen's acclaimed 2002 script of The Drowned World. Wayne Jordan both designs and directs, and the strength of the production is how thoroughly he has created an atmosphere of dark intensity.
The play addresses society's obsession with physical perfection by imagining a future state run by the unattractive, which tortures and exterminates the beautiful. This is a play about the "us and them" mentality but Jordan, ambitiously, points out the artificiality of these differences by having all four performers constantly involved in the action.
The script, early on, is heavy going with long, poetic, narrated passages. But as the plot develops, all four performers move in and out of the playing area, expressing emotions and relationships both by movement and words. It means that locations are sometimes unclear but it pays off in upping the emotional ante as the play's horrific central premise is articulated by the plain, "citizen" cop Kelly: the pure love between the gorgeous Tara and Julian cannot endure, and the future lies in Kelly and fellow citizen Darren raping the more attractive pair and stealing enough of their radiance to tolerate a life together.
It is nastily credible stuff, made more effective by the strong performances of Matt Torney as Darren and particularly Ruth McGill, a great discovery as Kelly. Unfortunately Marian Araujo and Paul Reid, though appropriately physically fortunate, are less interesting in the other two roles; we don't get enough of Julian's zealot-like belief in a positive future, nor of the complexity of Tara's reaction to Darren.
· Until March 12. Box office 00 353 1 881 9613.
