The Course Olympia Theatre

Whatever may be the accepted norms of writing, directing and acting a stage comedy - a plot that is fanciful, maybe, yet plausible enough to allow the audience to suspend its disbelief, jokes or situations that contain some wit and an element of surprise, characters that are sufficiently rounded to seem like real people, and so on - Brendan O'Carroll ignores all these and yet manages to write, direct and perform a work which last night delighted and involved a large audience. The plot is of a two-week course for would-be insurance salespersons, none of whom appear to want to join the company whose local (Dublin) man is running the course - the author at his most amiable and agile. The students include a loutish alcoholic, a prostitute, a thick eejit, a dutiful middle-class housewife, a camp would-be actor and a prodigious stammerer. The class is attended also by the company hit-man from Chicago who reckons that the Dublin man is turning out too many dud salespersons. But the students cop on to teacher's threatened dismissal and miraculously change their characters (none of which is ever more than cardboard thin) and their motives to thwart the American interloper so that everyone lives happily ever after.The actors provide a vigorous and spirited demonstration of the art of coarse acting. In any normal theatrical world the thing simply could not exist successfully. This reviewer can only put down its success to some kind of out-of-body experience in some parallel universe and congratulate all concernedon their demonstrable success.Running for three weeks at least. Booking (01) 677 7744.