Paul Meade and David Parnell's buddy play can't seem to get off the sofa. Mick arrives at his old friend Dermot's apartment one evening on the brink of tears: his girlfriend has kicked him out and he has been sleeping in his car. Faster than you can say Odd Couple, chubby and sloppy Mick has deposited himself in fastidious Dermot's living room, prompting a predictable comedy of lifestyle conflicts, score settling, and late-30s life crises.
The co-authors are apparently trying to write something low-key and accessible about masculinity and blocked emotions, but there's so little conflict in the play, and so little energy in Meade's production, that it's all practically horizontal.
Most of the attempted intrigue comes via flashbacks of a summer spent in New York City 18 years ago, when - surprise, surprise - one of the lads betrayed the other over a girl, a secret finally revealed by - the oldest device in the book - a lost piece of jewellery in a trouser pocket.
There is little here that has not been investigated before in many other forms, nor much justification that this needed to be happening on stage rather than on screen. The characters seem like a series of traits and behaviours, not fully fleshed-out people. Gerry McCann skims the surface as the bumbling Mick; the saving grace is a typically nuanced performance by the superb Tom Murphy as Dermot, who manages to keep things interesting even when, frankly, they're not.
· Until Saturday (box office: 00 353 1 881 96133). Then touring.
