A ONE-HOUR monologue named All Those Trammelling Dreams, by Colin O'Connor, has opened at the Crypt, Dublin Castle, which is eminently suited to small, intimate pieces. Intimacy alone cannot however redeem this slight piece from its inherent implausibility, made obvious in the opening minutes.

Crowd cries, apparently directed at rescuing a woman from a male attacker, are heard in the darkness; the light goes up to reveal a man lying on the ground, dishevelled and bleeding from the nose. He is the purported attacker and begins to defend himself and his actions - the woman has disappeared - to the crowd and to a policeman who has just arrived.

He has an extensive vocabulary which he employs to odd effect. The story he tells, interrupted by occasional retorts to his audience, goes on discursively well beyond the point by which a real crowd would have lynched him or a policeman hauled him off to the chokey.

It is a tale of one who once loved and lost to an old friend, and who has that night encountered the friend again, apparently holding out hope of a romantic reunion. Their meeting ends strangely.

The prose is studded with archaisms and has a turn-of-the-century (the last one) flavour, oddly formal and literary. It is possibly intended as a leg-pull, an extended shaggy dog story, but its lack of humour makes me uncertain even of that; certainly it is not a bundle of laughs.

Michael McElhatton brings personal authority and presence to his subject, using a good voice to underpin an assured and flexible delivery.