The impossibility of return haunts Patrick McCabe's new play, in a number of different ways. For the author it is a recreation of the unforgettable character of Frank Brady from his novel, The Butcher Boy. Frank's previous stage incarnation, in Frank Pig Says Hello (1992), was directed by Joe O'Byrne, who is here reunited with McCabe.
An older Frank (Peter Trant) is trapped in an afterlife that is neither heaven nor hell; a purgatory in which he drifts through the small town of his 1950s youth, remembering every sight and sound.
Retracing his steps, literally, in chalk on the bare black stage, he moves unseen through young revellers in new apartment blocks. It is less a lament for a changed rural Ireland though, than a longing to start his life all over again, to put right what had gone so badly awry. It helps to have read The Butcher Boy, or seen Neil Jordan's film version, but there's enough in this elegiac monologue to sketch Frank's story of crime and punishment.
Though suffused with McCabe's rural gothic sensibility, perfectly captured by Trant, there is less of his black humour, and it is hard for Trant to sustain this sombre piece. Headless apparitions in trench coats don't do enough to create a visual dream-world on stage, and the result is thinner than might be expected. Maybe it's time to let this ghost rest.
· Until July 26. Box office: 00 353 91 566577.
