Conor McPherson's new play for the stage is probably his most ambitious, and his most accomplished. It is about three lone males telling their three lonely stories.
Young Kevin has decided to leave home to share a house in Donnycarney with three others: Mad Dave Rose, a drunk drummer for a bad band called The Bangers, Speedy, who pays less rent and sleeps in the box room, and Clare, whose boyfriends inhabit the downmarket Dublin gig scene but who obviously has an undeclared fascination with Kevin.
Middle-aged Dermot has just been taken on by a firm of high-profile Dublin accountants for no cause that he can readily determine (although his wife, Mary, whom he is too embarrassed to introduce to his new high-flying colleagues, has told him that he is someone to whom things just happen).
And old Joe is living with a walking stick in a home with 20 residents; his wife, whom he met when they worked in Cadbury's factory, having predeceased him. Sister Pat (a religious who is a good nun) is the closest thing he has to a friend.
Their stories are overtly linked only by the coincidence of north Dublin geography around Donnycarney and Sutton Cross, yet inextricably interwoven by their differing propensities in different ways to avoid or evade what they see as opportunities for love or even lust. McPherson's writing is richly detailed, affectionately amoral and always compelling, even if it demands the closest of attention to make the most of its nuances. But at moments the words falter into silence or mere implication and the audience is left to its own imagination to work out the good or the bad of a situation.
Superbly and subtly acted under the author's direction by Eanna Mac Liam (Kevin), Stephen Brennan (Dermot) and Jim Norton (Joe), the evening, all 90 uninterrupted minutes of it, is totally absorbing, often hilarious and, at times, heart-wrenchingly moving.
It is played on Eileen Diss's plain planked sloping ramp in and against a lighting design by Mick Hughes which illuminates and informs almost every word of McPherson's rich, sad, comic and empathetic text. In almost every respect, this is an act of pure theatre, beautifully served by everyone concerned.
Plays until March 31st in London (to book, phone: 0044 207 369 1761). Opening previews in the Gate Theatre, Dublin, on April 19th, with opening night on April 24th (to book, phone: 01 8744045).