LIKE you'd throw a snowflake against black velvet to see its shape, Barabbas... the company has put the hum-drum, gentle, stunted, magnificent life of a small-town Irish draper's assistant with crazy dreams of GAA glory on the stage of the Project.

Mikel Murfi, directed by Raymond Keane, lovingly sketches the rhythms of a day in the shop, which, set against the bare stage and played by a clown in black shorts, is seen for the delicately made construction it is the perfunctory compassion, the endless attempts to call a halt to a phone conversation, the game of treating a little boy like a man.

But Liam, developed by the company from the odd photograph of a man at the GAA match, is not ridiculed, and the madness which is in him and in everyone is let off like a batch of fireworks. And it is played by Mikel Murfi with breathtaking physical control and enormous delicacy.

It is also a somewhat nostalgic piece and there is nothing wrong with that. Barabbas's assertion that their work is "riddled with the lunacy of red hair and the subtle beauty of a face full of freckles" reminds one, however, of the Dunnes Stores "The Difference Is Irish" campaign. If you're Irish, the work is Irish, Barabbas, and that is enough.