John Bosco McLane is a self-proclaimed "crusty bachelor" who, at 56, has never enjoyed the "jiggy-jig caper", though not for want of trying. It is to the credit of this production that we are never in doubt why: John Bosco remains a virgin because he's socially inept, self-absorbed and the victim of a society where religion, tradition and propriety obstruct free-flowing interpersonal relations.
The social observation in this adaptation of John B Keane's epistolary novel is spot-on, then - but would you really want to spend 95 minutes in the company of this difficult character? Adaptor/solo performer Des Keogh works valiantly to entertain us and incite our compassion with amusing anecdotes of John Bosco's romantic fumblings.
Director Charlotte Moore combats the potential stasis of the material by moving Keogh around the stage a lot, creating different settings - the confession box, the hotel dining room - through lighting changes and snatches of song. But the material overstays its welcome; in particular, the inclusion of an interval drags the evening down.
It's too much a show of two halves: before the interval, everything's quite light-hearted, focusing on Keogh's excellent imitations of the local matchmaker and the priest who finds his parishioners' idea of sin singularly unimpressive. In the second half, things get rather macabre and much more interesting, and John Bosco becomes more outspoken about the extent of his despair.
The last 10 minutes are quite moving, an effective evocation of existential loneliness that transcends its immediate social situation. If we got there more quickly, this would make a tidy package for the fringe festival circuit.
