Howie the Rookie

Mark O'Rowe is from Tallaght and it was appropriate last night that it should have been his play which opened the handsome new theatre in his home town, particularly since this remarkable play is powerful, poignant and pulverisingly funny.

It is delivered in two successive monologues, the first by the Howie Lee and the second by the Rookie Lee, which interlock and overlap to some extent in the accounts each gives of two days and nights of the violent urban underbelly of what passes for life.

The writing is a torrent of terse, staccato words, mostly straight narrative but larded with comments each personal to the separate narrators. It is rough, coarse, comical and disturbing.

It starts with Howie telling us of how he saw smoke one day on the far side of a field and found his pal Ollie burning a mat and mattress because they had scabies. Those who accepted the hospitality of Ollie's mat also have scabies - one of the lighter running gags in the piece.

Howie's oul fella never bought a car: he bought a Handicam instead with the money he was saving. Howie's other pal, Peaches, has a large and randy sister called Avalanche with whom Howie has some unsavoury sexual encounters, and there is a green Hiace van driven by Flan Dingle, with the Ginger Boy riding on the roof and Howie and Peaches leaning out the side door, which travels like nemesis around the neighbourhood.

Rookie, in his tale, gets into trouble because, while scratching one foot and hopping on the other (that scabies again), he kicks over the bucket in which Lady Boy has two Siamese fish that are supposed to fight each other and the fish (said to be worth £700) get trampled to death. Rookie needs money and is spectacularly unsuccessful in trying to raise it but wins Howie's protective support in the process until that green Hiace nemesis arrives to end the grisly tale.

Aidan Kelly is Howie in a magnificently funny and wonderfully physical performance. Karl Shields is Rookie (whose only real relationship with Howie is that they share a common surname) and is also powerfully good.

They both instil a sense of horror because the tragic tales they tell are accepted wholly by them as something kind of normal, an acceptance which also sparks most of the comedy quite naturally.

Simply and unobtrusively directed by Mike Bradwell, simply and suitably set by Es Devlin, this production from London's Bush Theatre, this play from Mark O'Rowe and these performances are crying out to be seen.

Running until April 3rd. Booking at (01) 462 7477.