There ought to be a law that new plays from first authors should be submitted to an impartial arbiter who will not shrink from the necessity of being cruel to be kind. Had Helen Casey's The Good Room taken that course, it would hardly have reached the professional stage, and thereby invited these dismissive words.
The story here falls somewhere between silly and twee and lacks any serious attempt at a theme. Not one of the characters comes close to being a credible creation and the dialogue is not the stuff of speech, ordinary or dramatically heightened.
The main characters are a husband and wife in mourning for the loss of their son, who left home at 20. They behave as if they know he is dead and the wife creates a shrine in his memory. A young Bosnian refugee arrives to do some gardening and induces hysterical reactions from the wife. Nothing makes much sense; there is even a caricatured undertaker, given a couple of bad jokes, to add to the confusion. Derek Reid and Una McNulty play the leads with admirable if misplaced intensity; others have nothing to do worthy of note. Direction by the author and Barry Casey is at best uninspired, and the 90 minutes, without interval, passes in a curiously remote atmosphere. Too bad.
Continues until April 8th; to book, phone: 01-6795720