Faithful

Mill Theatre, Dundrum, Dublin 8pm Until Aug 22 €20/€18 01-2969340

We aren’t particularly well acquainted with the qualifications of a professional assassin, but a conscience can’t be high on the list. Yet the actor/writer Chazz Palminteri put a conflicted hitman, whose principles get in the way of his assignment, at the centre of his 1996 stage comedy (later turned into a minor motion picture). Don Wycherley takes on the role of Tony in The Mill Theatre’s new production, sharing Italian-American aphorisms on fidelity with the radiant and entirely untroubled Carrie Crowley, a target for whom he is no match.

While Palminteri is busy constructing plot devices as tangled as the hitman’s ethics – like every mobster since, he has an analyst on speed-dial – the writer also introduces bleak and unconsidered elements: Tony has also been hired to rape his target. Nobody expects this to happen, but the threat is genuine, souring the tone and poisoning the comedy. Crowley strikes a fine balance between amusement and icy manipulation and David O’Meara offers good support in another unbelievable part, but Tom Kibbe’s production might have removed the more awkward contrivances, better serving Palminteri’s play by being less faithful to it.

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