The Irish male sex-drive stands in the dock in Tom Mac Intyre's adaptation of Brian Merriman's classic poem. The love debate that ensues is presided over by an all-singing, all-dancing tribunal cum Public Accounts Committee. Like those other forums, however, Tom Mac Intyre's court contains more than its fair share of longueurs. This is the author's second attempt in as many years to blow the dust off a classical 18th-century Irish poem and remould it into a modern fable. Sadly, however, this latest production is dogged by many of the same problems that beset last year's Abbey staging of Caoineadh Art Ui Laoghaire.

Central to this new version are meditations on male narcissism and censorship of the arts. Though Frank O'Connor's original translation of the poem was deemed too bawdy for publication, there was little De Valera's censors could do about the poem itself. Theories about Merriman's parentage are also randomly thrown in the pot. Mac Intyre is at his most surefooted, though, when he sticks to the Rabelaisian ribaldry of the original, with its barrage of heaving bosoms and thrusting buttocks. Merriman's terse, pungent verse still raises an involuntary laugh, and his advocacy of the marriage of Catholic clergy and his robust defence of love children have retained their resonance two centuries on. Mac Intyre's own attempts at humour are less successful, however, to the extent that he manages to transform the greatest comic poem ever written in Ireland into an extended revue sketch. Much of the prickly wit of the original is replaced by long-winded ranting rhetoric that is both pretentious and self-indulgent.The dramatic interplay is also hamstrung by some shaky phonetics. Fluency in Irish was obviously not high on the list of priorities in the casting of this play, and at times it was hard to grasp the unintelligible babble issuing from some of the actors' mouths. One of the few real pluses, however, is the performance of Brid Ni Neachtain in the role of Aoibheall, the fairy-Goddess of Thomond, while Sile Nic Chonaonaigh (the bailiff), Peadar Cox (the priest) and Niall O Sioradain (the censor) also emerge with great credit. There is undoubtedly some fine ensemble acting in the play and Michael Harding's direction is stunningly inventive and easy on the eye. It is well served by the music of Steve Wickham and by the carefully drilled choreography of Finola Cronin. The technical audacity of the production, though, compensates little for its dramatic and linguistic shortcomings.