Fight Night

Bewleys Cafe Theatre, Dublin

Never underestimate the potential and pleasure of a well-worn formula. Take the boxing drama, in which a damaged hero has something to prove. Coming from a long line of Finglas boxers that may trace its origin to the invention of the fist, Dan Coyle Jnr – son of Dan Coyle Snr, grandson of Dan Coyle The First – is long out of shape, heavy with grudges and finally spurred by his own fatherhood.

Against the tragic grandeur of comeback kids and has-beens, Dan Jnr is something more banal: a never-was. The brilliance of Gavin Kostick’s writing is to give the heroic form to an ordinary Dan, played by Aonghus Óg McAnally. If anything, the stakes get lower – first, he’s fighting for the middleweight champion of the world (“I am in me hole”) then simply to get fit. But the monologue, structured like the rounds of a boxing match, makes his private stakes higher: breathing hard through fitness struggles, tensely squaring up to his estranged father, steadily claiming an identity as a responsible family man.

Written specifically for McAnally – the son of performer Aonghus McAnally, grandson of the great actor Ray McAnally – any similarity to persons living or dead is intentional. That brings a bracing shiver to the line, “Me name has got me to this level, but not me”, yet the performance’s real impact is more universal and brutal. When it comes to the title bout of self definition, a son’s opponent is his father and here McAnally and Kostick deliver a knockout blow: “No man can fight his own da when both are in their prime and that’s the tragedy.”

The play’s psychology isn’t always deft: one dream sequence is so basted with symbolism that even Dan compliments his subconscious. But director Bryan Burroughs steadies the explication with the eloquence of physicality.

Fight Night'sfinal, wordless moments are its most extraordinary, McAnally's release so stark, exhilarating and cathartic that Colm Maher's lights dip too quickly, the music arriving too soon. We don't need to see McAnally land a punch to know what he's fighting for. We're up there in the ring with him.

Runs until June 11th