"What's up with you?" asks one member of the Walsh family of another. "Suburbia" is the almost snarled answer. And maybe it is suburbia that is up with Paul Mercier, in his first play on the subject of a thoroughly suburban Dublin family. It is as if this normally focused and ambitious author found that he had nothing much to say on the subject and simply filled a big box that might, like other family memorabilia in his play, have been stored on a shelf in the garage, with the cliches, the stock crises and the banalities of suburban life, without going back to sort them into some kind of dramatic order. Mrs Eve Walsh came, we are told, from a farm in the west, and takes comfort in religion and its certainty. Her husband James is a principal officer in the civil service serving out his time until the pension is available and pottering around his garden.
The kids are at various stages in their education, occupations and relationships: Deirdre, when we meet her, is a radical firebrand in the university debating society. Her brother Liam is a wannabe rock star who has incensed his upright father by drawing the dole. Maeve has a boyfriend, Gary, who is held in deep suspicion (for no particular reason) by the family, but she marries him anyway. Sean, who used to paint pictures (they're on the garage shelf) comes back from England with a window-dressing girl-friend who takes a fancy to Dad's garden, and so it goes, on through the years up to Eve and James's 35th wedding anniversary, when kids and grandkids come to call. But nothing much happens then either.
Lynne Parker directs the piece as if in a hurry to get out and get home. Angela Davies has designed a rather clunky set which offers few opportunities for significant dramatic exchanges, but there doesn't seem to be any of those anyway. Paul Keogan's lighting is, as usual, proficient. The talented actors include Barbara Brennan, Clive Geraghty, Karen Staples, Keith McErlean and more, but they have not enough dramatic meat to get their thespian teeth into.
Running for four weeks. Booking at (01) 878 7222.
