NOT having seen the original Barabbas production back in 1994, this reviewer can offer no invidious comparisons between then and this new re staged and re cast presentation of a largely silent work which offers touching, affectionate and often stark insights into the lives of a sparse rural population attending Mass.

Four skilled and highly expressive actors (Donal Beecher, Sarah Fitzgibbon, Raymond Keane and David Lyons) manipulate and then embody a dozen or so small hand held puppets, whose thoughts through a droning liturgy stray into odd corners of their individual and family lives.

Under Veronica Coburn's precise and carefully timed direction we learn of the bleak lives of two lads who have come to church by motorcycle, and of a family in which the father brutalises his son and largely ignores his self sufficient but repressed wife. We glimpse the woman who was bullied at school, and the woman who recalls her daughter's Christening even as the daughter remembers play acting a sacriligious "Mass" with the altar boy in a cob web laden attic. The snatches of lives are affectionately yet unsentimentally drawn and, despite the contrivances of puppets and props, carry a compelling authenticity.

Occasionally the attention wanders, but never for long, and Charlie O'Neill's clever setting provides both the church and a multiplicity of acting areas, well lit by Stephen McManus. Louise Kimmerling's puppets and Frank Maurer's miniatures are a delight. The ambience is gentle and humorous rather than dramatic or hilarious and one's sense of satisfaction is substantial. Well worth a visit.