Druid theatre company has given this flawed first play by Christian O'Reilly a dream production. The story is simple: two people, Tim and Jane, meet and drunkenly fall into bed at a New Year's party; she gets pregnant, and, despite being improbable mates, the couple decide to have the child together. While parenthood and legitimacy are classic Irish themes, this is not typical Irish writing: the play mentions abortion as a possible option for an unplanned pregnancy, for example, without then engaging the expected church/right to life debate.
Taking her cue from the contemporary feel of the script, director Garry Hynes has pared back the production, creating an operating theatre in which we watch these people open each other up emotionally. The audience sit on all four sides of Francis O'Connor's white-walled box set. Hynes uses the spareness of the setting to give props an enhanced meaning: a scene in which Tim drags an empty crib offstage in act two communicates heartbreakingly that the child did not survive its birth.
Most of all, the production works because of the raw, sensitive performances by Derbhle Crotty and Aidan Kelly. They have committed fully to story, character and, importantly, the presence of the other person on stage. But even they can't pull off some of O'Reilly's awkward plot devices. The characters are not sufficiently realised; as a result, Tim's monologue in which he reveals that he has believed himself impotent doesn't make emotional sense, while Jane's revelation of a lie about the baby's parentage is not convincing.
By bringing up, but not really engaging with, issues of class difference, O'Reilly extends posh girl/working-class-lad-with-heart stereotypes. And while the shape of the play is cleanly honed, much of the dialogue is simply banal: "It's not just you and me any more; there's the baby to think about now." Hynes famously gave Martin McDonagh his first production; at first look O'Reilly doesn't seem to be as significant a discovery. But who knows where a writer could go once he has seen his work given such full life on stage?
· Until August 17. Box office: 00 353 91 568 617.
