Compelling dissection of human conflict

Kyle and Freddie are longstanding best buddies when we discover them scraping wallpaper in the barely furnished living room of Kyle's house, where he lives with Sandra and their young son, Joe. They were members of an active young team in a loyalist paramilitary organisation and enjoyed their activities (whet her murder or theft) because they knew that everything they did was in the cause of defending Protestant Ulster. Things were simple in the "war": Protestants were the good guys (even if all were not quite that in reality) and Taigs were the bad guys. But now that the "process" has started and illegal activities have stopped and the party is trying to clean up its act, things are far from simple and opinions and attitudes can be in wild verbal and physical conflict among the members of the formerly active unit.

Neither Kyle nor Freddie believes that the "process" will lead anywhere, but Kyle is prepared to conform to the new strategies, while Freddie believes it will allow the old enemy to regroup and destroy unionism with its defences down. Sandra's views tend to coincide with Freddie's rather than Kyle's and we are left in no doubt - particularly when we meet Alec, the dubiously-motivated politician, Larry, the leader of the old active service unit and still boss of the club in which the young lads are no longer welcome, and Jack, the suspicious new manager of the club with dubious notions of how to make it respectable - that the conflicts within the whole group are likely to lead to no good for any of them. In their differing ways they are unlikely to come to terms with peace, legality and democracy, whatever the orders from on high.

The author's scene-setting takes up virtually the whole of the first act and is charged with high-energy emotional explosiveness. But, because some of the argumentativeness is couched in authentically inarticulate language, it seems at times to curl in on itself and impede the narrative process and could benefit dramatically from some careful pruning.

In the second act the dramatic plot takes over and, laced with Mr Mitchell's mordant humour, leaves its audience scarcely able to draw breath for fear of missing some detail of its frightening progress. It may not answer all the questions raised about loyalism and loyalty, about friendship and belief, about saying yes and saying no, about change and certainty, but it is compelling theatre which provides an extraordinary insight into human conflict.

Conall Morrison's direction is fluid and theatrically effective in a good, simple setting by Blaithin Sheerin on a revolve which moves effectively from scene to scene, and the performances are electrifying both individually and in ensemble. Patrick O'Kane's Freddie is a bomb waiting to go off and Stuart Graham's Kyle is a consummate study of a man torn between loyalties and in deep emotional pain. Cathy White's Sandra embodies the agony and the anger of being unable to come to terms with change, wishing angrily and incoherently for something better, and Wesley Murphy's Alec is perfectly the politician, at once bland and demanding. Colum Convey's Larry is torn between the tactical need to maintain control and authority over the unit and the emotional need to remain loyal to his men, while Frank McCusker slithers nauseatingly through the twists and dishonesties that are the essence of Jack.

Gary Mitchell has written another important play and its production and, above all, its performance, demand that it be seen.

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