Perve

Peacock Theatre, Dublin Previews until May 30 Opens May 31-Jun 25 8pm (Sat mat 2.30pm) 13-25 01-8787222 abbeytheatre.ie

Somebody must have been spreading lies about Gethin, the young film-maker at the centre of Stacey Gregg’s provocative new play: without having done anything wrong, Gethin has been branded a pariah, a perve and a more inflammatory p-word.

His predicament would be Kafkaesque were he not the inventor of these rumours, spread (at his insistence) by his school-student sister. Gethin, you see, is researching a documentary on mob hysteria and using himself as bait. In the implausible ethics of documentary-making, this is called “playing with fire”.

Could the same be said about Gregg’s play? For all its incendiary subject matter, her first full production for the Abbey seems keener to douse flames, concentrating on the eruptive social response to paedophilia – and the hypocrisy of ignoring it – rather than abuse itself. Unlike Landmark’s Blackbird or the Corn Exchange’s Lolita, whose reviews often read like efforts to shame their makers, Perve’s argument is carefully presented in the abstract. Gregg, however, watches as Gethin’s “concept” is outpaced by more simple forces of suspicion and emotion. “It’s an idea about difficult issues,” he weakly protests.

Director Róisín McBrinn, who brought a cool head to last year’s No Escape, has to find the drama in that idea, without being intimidated by its heat.

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