Reviews

Irish Times' critics review the latest from the world of the arts

Is This About Sex?
Half Moon,
Cork

Any play with a question in the title demands, or provokes, an answer. In the case of Rough Magic's Is This About Sex? the answer is that it's not about anything much really, although what the Americans call "giving head", or what is clinically described as cunnilingus would seem to be an issue in what nobody at all would call a plot.

Writer Christian O'Reilly gathers five people - one of whom is almost totally superfluous - to discuss in a series of pairings the sexual enjoyment they all seem to be missing. Or maybe, gathering a few stray clues, the superfluous role bravely taken on by Ruth Hegarty is there to show what it is to be without sexual enjoyment of any kind, but this is not necessarily the case in a piece of writing which, while slick and conversationally adroit, never, well, never climaxes.

No one in the cast goes wrong, but no one is challenged either and the players stroll comfortably through exchanges which may, or may not, argue in favour of greater sexual understanding of oneself and others.

A loving husband wants to dress and feel like a woman; the shop assistant who helps him buy lingerie has never heard of padded bras, which is why he stuffs this garment with socks. (There may be some significance in this as men have been known before now to have an intimate relationship with socks - but then again, maybe not.)

The shop assistant is bored by her partner who tries to woo her by adopting the tactics of a cave-man, the only role model he can find.

The husband's wife is bored by everyone, and the single really active ingredient in this scenario is the bed itself, which is pulled out and pushed back in Paul O'Mahony's clever set.

The feeling is that O'Mahony is the only one who knew what he was doing with this script; certainly costume designer Breege Fahy

decided to take the surreal approach, at one point dressing the bisexual husband in clothes which might have been worn by a clerical refugee from the French revolution.

Plus socks.

The great disappointment of this production is that the play seems to have drifted past director Lynn Parker.

No energy has been invested and nothing is generated. Whatever potential it may have had is allowed dribble into impotence.

Runs to Sept 15, then Oct 1-13 at the Pavilion, Dún Laoghaire, for the Dublin Theatre Festival

Mary Leland

Love Peace and Robbery /Knock 3 Times
Granary Theatre, Cork

The sociology of deviance has proved a perennial source of fascination for theatre practitioners, from middle class students applying Marxist theories to seasoned writers looking for convenient social groupings to convey their "message".

One could be forgiven then for thinking that a play, set in Cork, and focused entirely on working-class criminals, would be guilty of cultivating familiar clichés.

Yet writer Liam Heylin knows his subject intimately, largely due to his work as a court reporter, and therefore resists the temptation to over-moralise and caricature.

His writing is all the better for it, and with Love Peace and Robbery, Heylin delivers a finely observed, funny, and utterly convincing portrait of crime and its environs.

"Doing the job is not the problem," says young criminal Gary (Aidan O'Hare), "but someone puts the finger on ya and you're above in de barracks. You know you're going away, telling the smallies you're going away working." The cast of Aidan O Hare, Shane Casey and John Desmond turn in perfectly pitched performances, marked by their authenticity, under astute direction by Brian Desmond.

A lack of credibility, and to a greater extent, clarity, peppers the second offering on this Meridian double bill - Gaye Shortland's, Knock 3 Times. Where Heylin's writing is assured and economical, Shortland indulges in the sort of verbose overdose best left to creative writing workshops.

So, we have the Vietnam-obsessed cross dresser with feelings of "otherness"; the overbearing "mammy" figure; the gangsta rap obsessed Leaving Cert student; and characters who fall and hurt their pride.

Littered throughout is a series of mini-confrontations, which must have seemed instructive in rehearsals, but perhaps someone should have let the audience in on the act? There's an overwhelming sense that we've been there, post-modernised that.

The acting is the type you get when a cast have to read between the lines all too frequently - disjointed, unconvincing and emotionally reaching.

Even Cormac O'Connor's startling sound design is not enough to save this disjointed and ultimately incoherent production.

Runs till Sept 22

Brian O'Connell

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