Moll

It is something of a tradition now that actors from the RTE soaps, during their summer holidays, take to the stage with an appropriate vehicle for their talents. John B Keane meets Fair City in the current staging of his enduring comedy Moll, now at Tallaght's Civic Theatre, and they are well met.

The soap is, of course, an urban one, but no matter; the TV stars, with a little help from actor friends, take to the rural comedy with considerable brio. It is not the best or most ambitious of the author's plays, but it has his inimitable humour to keep the chuckles coming, and a few hilarious sequences to prompt uninhibited laughter. One leaves the theatre in very good humour.

The story needs little retelling here. Moll, the priests' housekeeper from hell, takes over a parish house on the divide-and-conquer principle. She cossets the canon and starves the curates, makes money through bingo and even more nefarious means, and secures her future while feather-bedding her present. Her total lack of respect for her clerical employers is funny and more than a little penetrating.

Gerard Byrne is the plummy canon, Mark O'Regan the embittered curate and Tony Tormey the gormless one, and Des Nealon has a cameo as the pompous bishop. Peter Dix and Joan Brosnan Walsh take small supports neatly, and riding high over all is Pat Leavy's authoritative Moll. As directed by John O'Brien and set by Tony Lyons, this is probably the best of the many Molls to pass my way.

Runs until Saturday. To book phone 014627477