The cracking pace set by director Max Stafford-Clark for O Go My Man lets the occasionally surreal comedy of the piece dictate both its mood and its impact, writes Mary Leland
O Go My Man, Everyman Palace, Cork
This is at the cost of a more thoughtful undertone in Stella Feehily's writing; when one of the characters describes his conscience as "a dimly-lit cellar" he might well be describing the play's own conscience, although here it is disguised as context.
The setting is the Dublin of today, a city of dubious morality where the pressures of competition and achievement are easily translated into personal transformations, as rapid as they are temporary. By the time the characters have reached Feehily's plot they are already damaged; whatever might have been distinctive or attractive about most of them has staled, and they hope to find redemption of a kind through new relationships or new work (publicists, art galleries, television).
None of this involves commitment, and it has to be said that although the actors themselves are committed to the play there is little about their roles to create any real concern about what happens to them all.
Actress Sarah (Susan Lynch) leaves photographer Ian (Paul Hickey) for news correspondent Neil (Ewan Stewart in roaring mode) who is married to Zoe (Aoife McMahon); as a TV producer Denise Gough strides about like something from the Spanish Riding School, Gemma Reeves is the sad 15-year-old Maggie caught up in the dissolution of her parents' marriage, and Mossie Smith appears as an East European version of a Greek chorus.
The quirky one-line quips indicate the cynicism of people in transit. No one really arrives anywhere, least of all at the truth. Feehily writes with an edge: "What's new about a massacre in Darfur?" asks an agent, dismissing Africa. Even war is stale, and it is this restless search for new sensations and greater sensationalism which infects the lives sketched here. It also influences the style and structure of the play where Es Devlin's blond-wood set design, with doors swinging like a metaphor, provides a series of locations and sound designer Gareth Fry edits the scene changes to the music of Felix Cross.
Until Mar 11
