After the international success of Stones in His Pockets, Marie Jones shamelessly plays to the home crowd with this populist musical comedy. There is a folksiness to the enterprise that extends from its title to the all-in-the-family approach to staffing: Jones performs as part of a six- person cast, and her husband Ian McElhinney directs.
A dramatisation of the cycles of life in an east-Belfast Protestant community, the overall product has a formulaic quality and a tendency towards syrupiness. And yet something subtle and fascinating is also at play here. By completely refusing to acknowledge the past 30 years of Ulster's political history, and by unabashedly celebrating northern Prod culture - a musical number about the marching season, anyone, complete with dustmen twirling brooms like batons? - Jones is laying down a cultural gauntlet.
Jones wrote the original material in the late 1980s as a piece for two actresses playing neighbourhood biddies Mona and Molly, who gossip the story into life. In the first act, shrewish Wendy Watson marries waster Derek. In the second act, which takes place entirely on a gobsmackingly idyllic July 12, Wendy has her first child and her Orangeman Granda dies "in action" on the parade route.
That the body is transported home in a wheelie bin gives a taste of the play's dark humour. There's another hilarious scene in which Mona dresses Granda's body and gets turned on when she inadvertently sits on his hand. Wendy and Derek's wedding ends in a bunfight, with Jones face down in a bowl of jelly and custard.
There are some clever bits of staging and funny topical references along the way, from Sean Kearns's terribly English sung commentary to sideswipes at Ian Paisley's neo-puritanism. And Trevor Moore's pop music helps create an overall atmosphere of accessible fun.
It will be interesting to see what Northern Ireland makes of such a specific and rose-tinted portrait of one of its cultures.
Until November 24. Box office: 028-9038 1081.
