A look at what is happening in the world of the arts today.

The Mobile

Andrew's Lane Studio, Dublin

This new play by Denis Byrne sets out to grab its audience with scenes of sex, violence and criminality, which are the bricks - or rather straws - with which it is constructed. Long before its predictable ending, it has been blown away by its own pretensions.

Danny is a minor Dublin drug-dealing crime boss who owns a nightclub and a brothel. We meet him as he is recruiting Sandra to prostitution, in words that combine cajolery with threat. She needs the money, so capitulates. A minion, Karl, is severely threatened for an improbable scam at the pool table. JCB, a bouncer, reports an incident with an aggressive youth named Stirrup, and is roundly abused for not dealing with it appropriately.

So Danny, with Karl in tow, sets out to teach the youth a lesson. He is beaten up, warned and kicked out on the street. Later on, in league with Karl, Stirrup takes his revenge on Danny, shooting him dead; and that's essentially the plot. Some attempt is made to give Danny a skewed persona, a mix of paternalism and sadism, and a bizarre relationship with his dead mother, communicating daily through his mobile phone. This lacks credibility, although Brian McHale Boyle has a decent shot at it. All the other roles are ciphers, embedded in a phoney realism that never convinces.

Dialogue, too, is ersatz, verbal mush beneath a tough crust. The characters converse through stilted words and expressions, including routine obscenities, and at times drift into off-putting chunks of monologue. There is not much that director Malcolm Adams can do with such a melange of flawed plot and inadequate writing, and it is not obvious that his attempts have added any value to the play.

Runs to Aug 20

Gerry Colgan