Quay West - Project Theatre

If there is merit in rendering a theatre audience physically uncomfortable, it escapes me. Sitting on hard benches for more than two hours without interval, peering into semidarkness many times over for a glimpse of actors' faces, craning necks frequently to attempt to see actors who are out of sight, rendering words incomprehensible or inaudible: these and more tend to distract from whatever dramatic transactions may have been intended in what the Bedrock Theatre believes may be the first performance in English of Quai Oeust, by Bernard Marie Koltes, who died a decade ago.

On the evidence of this translation by David Fancy, Joseph Long and Alex Johnston, the delay in staging an English-language version of the play seems understandable, and maybe the physical discomfort was an intentional distraction.

The setting (by Johanna Connor) into which elderly suicidal Maurice and his frightened chauffeuse Monique stumble is a pitch-dark warehouse of sorts and its waterside waste hinterland. It sounds like a metaphor for a place on the margins of human existence and every character who enters is indeed marginalised by one or more of many factors: age, language, gender, wealth, unemployment, race, fear, ambition, inarticulacy, envy - a veritable catalogue of marginalisations.

Yet in floods of words - many of which amount to no more than hifaluting banality - the issues of marginalisation remain largely unexplored except insofar as the author seems to be suggesting that marginalised people can communicate only in terms of relative power and weakness and only in terms of barter or trade of some kind.

It's a small message from so many words and so much discomfort and so little coherent drama. Ironically, the character who utters not a word says both as much and as little as anyone else.

Jimmy Fay's direction is curiously unfocused, slow and drained of energy, and his cast work very hard for little dramatic effect. But Michelle Read, Des Nealon, Paschal Friel, Shane Hagan, Neili Conroy, Kate Perry (the incomprehensible one), Mick Nolan and Bisi Adigun (the silent one) work prodigiously.

Until May 1st. Telephone booking on 1850 260 027.