Gary Mitchell continues his revealing exploration of Ulster Protestantism with a mordantly funny and deeply unsettling peep at three generations of a traditional Orange family as they come into, move through and don't quite get out of the fortnight around the 12th of July. There is grandfather Samuel and grandmother Shirley, two law-abiding, God-fearing folk whose Christian thoughts and deeds were developed before violence and confrontation became the order of the day and when one good turn deserved another.
There is their son Christopher, who joined the RUC to protect the family and the Protestant community from the IRA and has learned that things are not quite as simple as most people seem to see them - not least his own family. He is going through an uneasy separation from his wife and his children, the flighty Lorraine and the fire-brand Ricky, have come with him to live with their grandparents. And Johnny, whose father is an old friend of Samuel's, has come (as usual) from Glasgow to play in a band in the parade on the 12th.
Conflict abounds in the family home: grandparents cannot abide Ricky's four-letter language, and Christopher can tolerate no nonsense from his increasingly independent teenage children. Ricky and Lorraine fight with each other as only adolescent siblings can. Needless to say, each generation holds an entirely different view of what the marching season is all about. And Sammy, the family friend, suffers deepening unease as the days and nights pass and he watches what is going on in the house and out in the threatening streets outside.
The author has structured the play as a kind of domestic comedy without ever allowing anyone in the theatre to escape the seriousness of the conflicts within and without. But the resultant situations, the structure itself and even occasional patches of dialogue, create difficulty for the director, Stuart Graham, in trying to impose a consistent dramatic drive and for the actors in trying to establish a consistency of mood.
Ricky is one of the greatest comic manifestations of adolescence since Neil Simon wrote Brighton Beach Memoir, and Packy Lee makes the most of every moment he has to both comic and dramatic effect: even as we laugh we can still see how he might burn your house or your car or beat you up if he thought you were impeding his grandfather.
Sean Caffrey's Samuel covers his inner gentleness with an outer bluster and Helena Bereen's Shirley is gentle in her firmness. Sarah Boyd Wilson rises perfectly to every taunt and challenge and subsides beautifully in the cause of domestic tranquillity. Simon Wolfe's Christopher, knowing most, is the most frightened of the family, and his is the most taut and touching performance, while Ian Beattie's Johnny gets metaphorically more and more gob-smacked as he watches everything going on.
Johanna O'Connor has provided a very serviceable set, which (with sound and music from Paul Stewart and Paul Boyd) allows the marching to swirl outside while the family flails inside. Play and production make for a lively, if often uneasy, evening of theatre.
Runs until July 1st. Booking: 028-90381081 in Northern Ire- land, or 00-44-28-90381081 from the Republic
