The opening scene from Carolan's Farewell, set in Belfast, dealing with the Troubles, features a man holding a gun to his own head. One could be forgiven for expecting something seen all too often in the theatre or on film - the bleak, futile tragedy of wasted life in the North.
But soon it becomes clear that this particular refraction of Northern light is centred as much on the wise-cracking, slightly pathetic, character of Kevin Carolan (he who is, it seems, attempting suicide) as on the socio-political backdrop.
Gradually we learn his story as his wife, mother, father, sister and arch-enemy from his past (some living, some dead) come to mind (and on stage), variously reminiscing, berating and torturing Kevin with his past.
Bit by bit, we realise there are questions that need to be answered. Why is Kevin about to kill himself? Why did he leave Belfast? Why did his sister die 23 years previously?
Jerome McCann's and Isabel DeBiasio's dialogue is peppered with ripe, salty Belfast language (his mother says "I don't mince my words - I call shite shite"), and is sometimes too eager to fire off a quip rather than stare the unpalatable truth in the face. But then again this is one of the play's stated subjects - the Irish capacity/necessity to laugh in the face of horror or tragedy. And horror and tragedy are precisely what we discover lurking behind the comedy.
Kevin's character is ultimately too risible and thinly drawn to engender the sort of empathy and feeling that would have made the comedy smart with tension and the tragedies really resonate.
But one of the play's strengths is the rock-solid performance of David Pearse as One-Shot; (perhaps a relatively easy part to play - that of the uneducated, violence-prone IRA bigwig wannabe); another is its interweaving of the personal and the socio-political, never allowing one to be subordinated to the other as so often happens in the real life as well as the fictions of the North.
Runs until Saturday (to book phone 061-6319866), then tours to Skibbereen Town Hall (November 15th, 16th), St John's Arts Centre, Listowel (November 18th), The Garage Theatre, Monaghan (November 24th) and the Backstage Theatre, Longford (November 25th, 26th, 27th)
