Traditional: Cathal O Searcaigh, Paddy Glackin, Micheal O Domhnaill, Ionad Cois Let it be simply recorded that this reviewer received, just as the show was starting, from one of the progenitors of the entertainment, a brown envelope containing at least a facsimile of three £20 pound notes.
So, for the record, lest a tribunal be set up to investigate the incident, this is a rough-and-ready show which could greatly benefit from the following: a slightly larger stage allowing greater freedom of movement; a good revue director with an eye to those movements; a sharp choreographer; and a sound engineer who would balance and better moderate the too-highly-amplified noises created between voices and electronic piano. Oh, and the second half is much less theatrically focused on Flood than the first half is on Moriarty. OK?
That said, this may be the theatrical tonic which the nation needs to see it through the interminable national turmoil of the Moriarty and Flood tribunals.
Some decades ago, the late Donal Foley, who regaled the nation with his satirical column, Man Bites Dog, in this newspaper, used to say it was becoming almost impossible to satirise the country because it was effectively satirising itself.
It may just be that Malcolm Douglas and Joe Taylor, who rose to national pre-eminence as the reciters on Vincent Browne's late evening radio programme of cogent excerpts from the tribunals, have found the answer to Foley's problem. They don't re-write the material. They just quote it directly with excellent timing and hilarious intonations.
And they have recruited Susie Kennedy to belt out some grand (and highly relevant) parodies of such songs as It Ain't Necessarily So (on collective amnesia), Pennies from Heaven and Cayman Islands in the Sun, not to mention the classic Won't You Come Home, You Baileys?, all to the spirited accompaniment of Gaby Smythe.
Given the litigious state of the nation these days, it might be as well to rush out and book now before someone refers the whole issue to the High Court and the Supreme Court and whichever of the European Courts deals with these things. But see it the nation must! It may be our only hope of political sanity in the years to come.
Scheduled to run at HQ until July 29th. Booking: 01-8783345
