Getting the Picture

Andrew Jackson: born in South Carolina of Ulster extraction, seventh President of the United States, founder of the Democratic party, scourge of the Indians, hero of the Battle of New Orleans against the British. Get the picture? Andrew Jackson: consummate politician, plantation owner, slave trader, unfaithful husband, master of his black housekeeper and father of a black son, whom he views as just another piece of commercial property. Get that picture too? Only the man himself is in possession of the full picture, and it takes two unscheduled, simultaneous visits by an ambitious young photographer and a young woman from Carrickfergus to challenge him into revealing all its blurred, unexposed detail.

David Pownall's complex, thought-provoking, new play of ideas aired at this time of remembrance and reappraisal, lifts the lid on the murkiness and corruption at the heart of the political game. Under Eoin O'Callaghan's patient, sensitive direction and within Will Hargreave's stunning, sharp-focused set, truths and half-truths are slowly - in the first act, a little too slowly - exposed and developed. Sorcha Kinlock has come thousands of miles to plead with Jackson to take interest in his Irish roots and help do for Ireland what he did for America in the War of Indepedence. But even her determination cannot unravel the web of expediency into which Jackson has dug himself.

Chris Crooks and Anni Domingo as president and slave create a partnership which crackles with sexual tension and unspoken shared experience. Jasmine Russell is a feisty, hard-headed Sorcha and Niall Cusack's Lyle mellows into three dimensions in the closing scenes, when the full impact of the intrigue of life within the plantation walls strikes home.

Until November 25th. Booking on Belfast 381081