Belfast 1984. Thomas Tod Malone is an IRA man caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Out of love with the violence of the IRA and dreaming of a west coast cottage by the sea with his wife, and in lust with his unit commander's wife, Malone is a man under pressure. Then one night he gets abducted. But his captors are not - as he first thinks - loyalist paramilitaries, but his own IRA colleagues who believe that he has turned informer. Have they got their man? Or is Malone just another victim of the lies and paranoia that have infected these men of violence?
Danny Morrison has claimed that his play - based on his 1997 novel of the same name that he wrote while in the Maze after his conviction for the abduction of an IRA informer - is too controversial for Northern Irish theatres to stage. I fear that he is kidding himself. The thriller-like structure may have made it a gripping novel but alas it translates into a mediocre and awkwardly constructed play that springs very few surprises because its currency is low key TV naturalism and because it signals its ending long before it gets there.
There are odd moments that suggest that Morrison has some grasp of dramatic tension, most particularly in a scene in which the breakfast tables of two households are simultaneously revealed. Unfortunately, the stumbling production throws the moment away. It doesn't do many favours for the actors either. There are some potentially good performances here - if they wouldn't mumble so. Morrison may be writing from experience of both the IRA and the RUC, but he also seems to be writing from well-worn clichés. Maybe the IRA is all hard men and sad-eyed women and maybe the RUC is full of thugs. Maybe I've just seen it all one too many times before on stage, in the movies and on TV.
· Until April 3. Box office: 020-7609 1800.
