I was told that I'd either love or hate Brendan O'Carroll's comic creation of Mrs Brown. But I found nothing, least of all the conspicuously advertised "strong language", in Good Morning Mrs Brown to arouse such extreme partisan emotions.
Its crudeness, unpretentiousness and gratuitous pokes at standard targets - the dipso doctor, the two-timing detective, the back-sliding priest, the queer son and his camp boyfriend - were likeable and energetic enough, but most of the time the performance only hinges on the variety of intonations O'Carroll can squeeze out of the F-word.
All of the other characters are merely foils to draw out as many expletives as possible from the redoubtable Mrs B, who only has to stand in the middle of the stage, twitching and cursing under her breath to bring the whole house down.
But this is, after all, just predictable comedy.
It's been agreed well in advance of opening night that a typical northside Dublin Mammy swearing like a trooper, joking about vibrators, and wishing Grandad would get his skates on and die is uproariously funny, and it would be foolish to expect anything more comically inventive than this.
One can't help feeling a little cheated all the same once it becomes obvious that Mrs B can extricate herself from any difficulty by simply swearing and shuffling off into the kitchen to make a cuppa, or can fill any lull in the action by giving her own peculiar little trademark laugh.
Many of our best-loved cartoon characters are more resourceful than this.
At least O'Carroll spares us the unmasking of Mrs B's heart of gold. At one point a sentimental reconciliation between Mammy and daughter does seem imminent but is immediately wiped out by the next scene and amounts to no more than a few concessionary lines.
At no point in the performance is Mrs B in any serious danger of becoming two-dimensional.