THE first few minutes of The Ante Room, the new production from Limerick's Island Theatre Company, tugged at my memory. What surfaced was a recollection of various minor plays in the Abbey Theatre's repertory of the Thirties, all of which responded to attempts at revival as a stone does when thrown into a lake.

Still, given that we had here an adaptation, by Kevin O'Connor, of a novel by Kate O'Brien set in the 1930s, there was still hope that dramatic content might boat the rap.

That possibility soon faded when a man begged a woman, in all apparent sincerity, for a glimpse of her ankle. The audience's laughter was not unkind just embarrassed by what was very likely a period piece.

So the play goes. Mother is dying, and her family have gathered around her. While she lingers interminably, her syphilitic son falls winningly in love with a nurse, the family doctor romances a daughter who is in thrall to her older sister's husband, who reciprocates, and white haired dad potters about feelingly.

By the end there has been one death, one suicide and lots of angst, none of which communicates with the audience in a dramatic way.

This failure is partly due to the dialogue, which veers between the declamatory and the floral. It undermines the truth of the characters and, it seems, the actors' ability to portray them with conviction.

John Anthony Murphy's embodiment of the poxy son tends to the risible, Paul Meade's doctor gets by on personal presence and a low key approach, the others fall somewhere between these two.

Terry Devlin's direction does little to help matters along. Not every novel, alas, makes a play.