Nicholas Kelly's new play tries to describe a new Ireland of bankrupt values in which people are unable to connect except through capitalist exchange. His dramatic means, however, are convoluted, and Gerard Stembridge's stilted production fails to add clarity or interest.
The central character is Alan, a manager at a swish Dublin bar, who, we're told repeatedly, is going through a "quarter-life crisis". His older, hippyish sister Amy is suspected of having roughed up one of her teenage students, and Alan attempts to intervene, because the beaten kid, Scott, is the nephew of one of his bosses. Confused? Much of the play's energy is devoted to this storyline, which, frustratingly, ends up a dead end, presumably to make the point that the characters are chasing the wrong things.
All three younger characters - Alan, his insufferable former air hostess girlfriend Nicola, and Scott - say things that seem awkward coming from them, their dialogue ricocheting between trendy epithets and moments of not very credible eloquence. Dan Colley manages well enough as Scott, but Jonathan Forbes and Leigh Arnold seem out of their depths as Alan and Nicola.
Amy and her shambolic, drunken boyfriend Stephen seem to have more of the playwright's sympathy, and are excellently played by Stephen Brennan and Fionnuala Murphy. The pair know they are out of step with today's Dublin, and Stephen's dubious insight that the point of life is "the search for oneself" seems to be Kelly's main message.
But what is he driving at by drawing so many parallels between the older and younger figures, and by the images of apocalypse and decadent Greek society? Is it purposeful that the new Ireland he describes is knitted together by familial connections and characters coincidentally crossing paths in ways that seem old-fashioned? The play ends up a confused mess.
· Until March 11. Box office: 353 1 878 7222.
