Third and last in the Focus Theatre's season of new one-act plays, presented at lunchtime, is Lorcan Roche's two-hander about a failed marriage, Him and Her. Unusually for a male author - or maybe not? - the man is the unsympathetic one, an intellectual wimp, and the woman a likeable product of uninhibited nature.
In the clever construction, each occupies a part of the stage to deliver the story, with overlaps which bring them into direct contact and give depth to the individual narrations. He is an academic scientist, she a nothing-in-particular some 20 years younger. Theirs is at first the attraction of opposites, and, since they are essentially decent and conventional people, they get married.
But their profound differences soon emerge under the pressures of intimacy. He is emotionally stunted, a legacy from his parents and the suicide of his mother - perhaps a little overkill there. She is open and starving for a life beyond the cold logic he offers in his stilted conversation; plus, he refuses even to contemplate having children. The relationship gradually closes up, and inevitably ends.
The details of that ending, implausibly without rancour, slide into a sentimentality which the author has before avoided, but the thrust of his story holds.
For almost an hour, with two delicious performances by Brian de Salvo and Elizabeth P. Moynihan, directed by Paul Keeley, he creates intelligent and relevant theatre; an auspicious debut.
Continues to 29th August; booking at 01-676 3071/660 7109
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