Bernard Farrell's substantial new comedy is about failed expectations, lies and half-truths and ill-kept secrets in an immediately recognisable middle class Irish family.
Its first act covers the early 70s silver wedding celebrations of Dan and Doris Gillespie in the old family home: the sing-along party is going on in the front parlour while the family's conflicting individual aspirations are teased out in the kitchen. The second act covers the golden wedding celebrations when, the sing-along party thudding from the morning room, the family aspirations lie scattered around the same kitchen floor as family and friends come to realise that, having made their respective beds in life, they must continue to lie in them.
In the first act, young Kevin Gillespie (who was to have fulfilled his mother's dream the he become a priest) has just left the Irish College in Rome and is to be visited by a mysterious Italian woman who, Kevin claims to the family, is a nun come to counsel him.
His brother John is a head teacher who will brook no suspicion of scandal that might tarnish his respectable reputation. John's fiancee Betty, daughter of the ebullient old family friend Pauline, may still fancy Kevin with whom she once visited Kevin's metaphorical bed in Glendalough. Dan is suffering pains in his knees and Doris is the driving hostess at the party. And in the kitchen, there is the dumb waiter used to serve Granny, confined to her upstairs room but never exactly shut out from the family's kitchen conversations.
By act two, Dan and Doris are brought back from their sheltered accommodation in Athlone to celebrate the golden jubilee in the old home and nothing has gone quite as might have been hoped for.
In the hands of Alan Ayckbourn (and there have always been strong echoes of Ayckbourn's dark side of the English middle classes in Farrell's distinctively Irish approach) there would have been cruel farce. But here everything is softened by compassion and affection which blunts the theatrical impact yet leaves more to remember of the characters who people the play.
Ben Barnes's direction is suitably gentle, even if it leaves some of the more richly comic opportunities of the piece without the belly-laughs they might have won with a riskier over-the-top interpretation.
The performances are all excellent both individually and in ensemble. Eamon Morrissey's irascible Dan marks a welcome and long overdue return to the Dublin stage of this splendid comic actor. Barbara Brennan's firmly fraught Doris is his perfect foil, and the affection between the two is palpable at all times. David Parnell's terminally indecisive Kevin is fine (but might have been more exaggerated with greater comic effect), and Catherine Walsh's Betty is rightly fiery and flirty, while Marion O'Dwyer as her mother is the epitome of the enthusiastic life-and-death of the party personality. Carmen Hanlon is the Italian woman (and never better than when in full fluent Italian flood). Sean Rocks is perfectly stolid and limp as John, Kevin's teaching brother, and Lisa Harding makes a sprightly granddaughter for Dan and Doris.
Frank Hallinan Flood's setting is perfect in terms of both mechanics and atmosphere, well lit by Tony Wakefield, and Joan O'Clery's costumes are inch perfect in style and period. An absorbing and richly structured comedy is well served by an excellent production.
