IT seems highly probable that Manuel Puig's novel contains a depth and a richness which is not evident in this adaptation for the stage, in which the duologue between two very different men confined in a prison cell remains purposefully superficial (and, in Allan Baker's sometimes awkward translation, not always naturally persuasive). Too often, in theatrical terms, the play seems a contrivance to deliver the story rather than an expression of the intelligence and emotion which must surely have been more evident in the novel.
The tale is of the muscular revolutionary Valentin (not quite macho enough in Darragh Kelly's portrayal), who finds himself incarcerated with the effeminate gay Molina (touchingly acted by Gerard Murphy) - each of them in their different ways prisoners of the socio political circumstances of their lives. Molina is being used by the prison authorities as a mole to try to gather information which might lead to the capture of Valentin's revolutionary comrades, but this fact is repeatedly couched in the theatrically unsatisfactory contrivance of amplified voice overs, and the final curtain is drained of its emotional content by a similar artificial device.
The two actors (under the direction of Vanessa Fielding for the Co Motion Theatre Company) suffer from the merely technical fact that both their voices are of approximately the same pitch, so that the duologue - with Valentin offering his views of real life band Molina his diverting tales from a movie script about the panther woman to try to escape from the reality of prison - too often tends towards monotony. Yet the characterisations are both nicely understated as a genuine affection - gradually grows between the pair.
The bleak prison setting is by Chisato Yoshimi and the action is, for the most part, well lit by Stephen McManus, although a little more focused light on the actors' faces in the scenes of darkness might have helped both them and us. In all, this is clearly a serious and professional piece of work which is never less than interesting and which, while it does not quite manage to enthrall, is worth seeing even as an incitement to read the novel.
