For the latest of Marie Jones's plays, she has gone back to the earlier success of Women on the Verge of HRT and here her two women, previously adorers of Daniel O'Donnell, have taken a more dangerous plunge with a holiday in The Gambia. Anna manages to fall in love with Halif who, 20 or more years her junior, runs a makeshift and predictably unsuccessful bar/cafe.
At first it seems that the author is being patronising about the Africans, but then it becomes clear that she is trying to use a simpler civilisation to comment on her own society in Belfast. She plays the plot as a piece of fantasy, but the sub-text remains steadfast to her original social instincts on Belfast and its women.
The show will benefit from direction that is more focused, more imaginative than that given by Terry Byrne here. It becomes very unconvincing when we hear a Belfast Vera (an otherwise sturdy performance from Ruth Hegarty) speaking with a resonant Dublin accent. And the resolutely happy ending is singularly unsatisfactory given Anna's miserably lonely mother back in Belfast (Moyne Cope) and the loveless guilt of Anna herself (Amanda Hurwitz). Maybe this doesn't matter if the piece has been written merely for entertainment, but some of Ms Jones's text leads us to believe that it might have been more.
Plays until September 30th (booking at 01- 67717170)
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