Speaking for those who left quietly

Red Kettle Theatre Company is boiling away indoors, ensconced in the dim interior of the Waterford theatre on a gorgeous, hot afternoon. They are rehearsing final runthroughs before the first preview of their new production, and trying to ignore the sunshine that sends a bright knifeblade of light through the door every time someone opens it briefly.

In the hot, dark belly of the theatre, director Jim Nolan compliments John Hewitt, who plays English barman Bob, on his pint-pulling. "Considering all the pints we've drunk in our time," he quips, "it takes a lot of practice to get it right." Tony Flynn, who plays transvestite Mark-Gertie, straps on his shocking-pink high-heeled sandals, and stands on a barstool. "Size nine, from a shop on Grafton Street," confides Deegan. Alan Leech, who plays Willie, a 19-year-old Dubliner, tries to finish his sandwich before his next scene. For Charlie Bonner, who plays Paul, a Donegal man of 25, this is his second role in a Loughlin Deegan work: he also appeared in The Stomping Ground.

The play in rehearsal is the seventh draft of The Queen and Peacock, by Loughlin Deegan, which opened this week. Directed by Jim Nolan, the actors are John Hewitt, Tony Flynn, Alan Leech, and Charlie Bonner. This is Deegan's second play; his first, The Stomping Ground, was staged in 1997, to positive reviews that looked forward to his next piece of work.

The Stomping Ground was first given a rehearsed reading in the Peacock, before its Red Kettle production, and the play subsequently went on to win the Waterford Crystal/WLR FM Arts and Entertainment Award. Deegan is now literary manager of Rough Magic, and editing the second edition of the Irish Theatre Handbook.

The Queen and Peacock takes the gay-related issues of The Stomping Ground some steps further: the four characters in the Queen, for instance, know that they are all gay, so the issues being explored in this play are at a deeper level. The two-act play takes place over one evening in a Brixton pub, called the Queen and Peacock. This makes The Queen and Peacock at least the third new Irish play of very recent years set entirely in a pub - others being Conor McPherson's The Weir, and Jimmy Murphy's The Muesli Belt and Jim Nolan's The Kings of Kilburn Highroad.

Barman Bob has watched his custom dwindle over time, and listened to the stories of his regular customers, Paul, from Donegal, and Mark, a transvestite. On the night the play is set, Mark brings along Willie, fresh off the plane from Dublin, who he has picked up the night before. There is a fifth, unseen character, Ciaran, an Irishman, who is dying of AIDS in a London hospice, and who also used to be a regular in the pub. He has not been back to Ireland for many years.

Over the course of the evening stories are told, and secrets revealed. "Back in the early 1990s, when I was doing a postgrad in UCG," Deegan explains, "we ran a gay and lesbian disco. We were expecting about 60 people, and hundreds turned up, from everywhere. One man had driven four hours from Donegal to be there. I met this man there who told me he'd been away for 15 years, and who had turned into a serious drinker in London to get up the courage to go to clubs. He ended up going into rehab. It was coming up to Christmas and he was wondering if he would call his family or not."

The story set Deegan thinking: what if this man had never come back; if he died of AIDS in London, never telling his family he was gay, let alone that he was dying. "He'd been away for all the 1980s, having unprotected sex. He was just so lucky he didn't get anything." This is the story of Ciaran, the character we never see, but who has had a complex relationship with all the others, except newcomer Willie.

"I wanted to write a play about a gay generation who emigrated silently and the damage that living that kind of life created," Deegan explains. He agrees that there was much discussion in rehearsal as to when the play is set, which is "late 1990s. Willie tells them Ireland has changed, that Dublin is now an easier place to come out in. He is the catalyst."

However, the play does feel a decade older: it's difficult to believe the Irish characters in London - who seem to be up to date on their GAA results - haven't heard of the vast changes which have taken place in the capital in the last few years. More significantly, why does it take Willie such a long time to twig that absent, ill Ciaran - who Paul tells him very early on is "in a hospice" has AIDS? It's well into the play when Willie cops the nature of Ciaran's illness and says to Mark: "Does this mean that yer man who's sick . . . That he has . . ." Mark: "Yer man who's sick could have been a little bit more selective about where he stuck his cock, comprende?" Willie: (slowly) "Oh, right."

Deegan hopes his audiences will go away with an awareness of how hard it is for gay people in this country. "I don't like thinking of the play as `an issues play' - but the issues in it are very strong. A lot of the time when I was watching the rehearsals, I found myself getting very angry. I'm unapologetic about the issues it raises. Yes, I do want people to engage with the issues. It's easy to make an audience laugh - I call it the Roddy Doyle factor; people laugh at curses - but it's much more difficult to make them engage with issues."

The Queen and Peacock is at Garter Lane, Waterford until September 9th, 051- 855038. It runs at the Belltable in Limerick from September 11th to 16th, 061-319709.