I feel a driving need to see Enda Walsh's new play again - and I mean that as both commendation and criticism. The central conceit is brilliant, the performances excellent, and the overall experience of Mikel Murfi's production for Druid Theatre Company disturbing, memorable and deeply moving. But the play is so complicated that it was difficult to grasp completely. The script is Walsh's fullest realisation yet of characters trapped in bizarre, heightened circumstances who tell their own stories as a means of expressing twisted love.
Unlike in her previous plays, Disco Pigs and Bedbound, the mangled psychologies of these characters are communicated not through torrents of ornate language, but through complexities of form and plot. The titular farce is a horrible ritual that Dinny (Denis Conway) has been forcing his two young adult sons (Aaron Monaghan and Garrett Lombard) to re-enact for most of their lives. The arrival of a fourth character upsets the balance, with tragic consequences.
The fact that the three main actors play multiple roles in the internal plot is clearly intended to up the farcical ante, but it makes things hard to follow. The situation that emerges is so violent and extreme that the opening-night audience seemed uncertain how to react, but was certainly riveted.
Touching on emigration, Irish-British relations and racism, the play forges new territory for Walsh in terms of social comment, but bears the stamp of his macabre yet romantic imagination. It may not be such a bad thing to have audiences' intelligences overestimated for a change.
· Ends Saturday. Box office: 353 91 569777. Then touring.
