Once in a Lifetime review: What are we like? This lively four-hander assesses contemporary Ireland

Once in a Lifetime

Project Arts Centre

★★★★☆

It would not require a stretch to describe Tracy Martin’s lively four-hander as a state-of-the-nation play. Yes, the drama never escapes one half-built room. Two young women set out to complete a secret plan. Two older women surprise them. Arguments are thrashed out as we move towards a deliberately enigmatic ending. No tyrants rise or fall. Yet the drama, directed by Una McKevitt for Red Bear Company, covers an enormous number of contemporary squabbling points. Reproductive rights. Race. Familial abuse. Direct provision. Class. The limitations of the judicial process. Perhaps too many of these stories are taking place outside the room, but the first-class actors just about make them all live.

Leah Moore (great timing) and Deborah Dickenson (sweet delivery) play, respectively, the sarky, sweary Ciara and the endlessly patient, too-accommodating Sarah. Within minutes of them entering the chaotic set – the open walls enclose a nascent house extension – we realise that Ciara is planning to take abortion pills. Before the operation reaches completion we meet Lorraine, her heavily pregnant mum, and Tanya, her waspish stepmother. If anyone has an arc it is that last character. The experienced Lynette Callaghan, always good at spitting bile over a cocked shoulder, does a good job of allowing Tanya’s insecurity to leak out through half-convinced aggression. Georgina McKevitt, as the less coiled Lorraine, keenly grasps her character’s glib willingness to dismiss her partner’s professional compromises.

It might all spin out of control without Dickenson’s sly turn as the quietly sane hub about which the tempests rage. “What are you all like?” she seems constantly on the point of remarking. What indeed?

Continues at Project Arts Centre, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until Monday, September 11th