Arrah-na-Pogue

Abbey Theatre, Dublin

The title character in Dion Boucicault’s 1865 melodrama certainly knew how to get her message across. Hiding an escape plan in her mouth, she delivered it to the imprisoned rebel Beamish Mac Coul through her lips; a letter concealed with a kiss.

Boucicault’s message and its delivery weren’t nearly so simple. A conciliatory depiction of the aftermath of 1798 rising, its plot involves noble Irish rebels and reasonable British soldiers resolving the breathless convolutions caused by romance and revolution – contrivances that are as fun to watch as they are difficult to describe – and works as a veiled argument for Home Rule.

The Abbey’s new production tries to get that message across with the right sort of kiss – full-on and knowing, warm and giddy – but it’s an awkward smooch.

Playing Boucicault straight isn’t an option (with so many cross purposes, mistaken identities and false confessions, he’s twisty enough to begin with) and Mikel Murfi’s production amplifies its unreal qualities with a pleasing pop-up book aesthetic.

Sabine Dargent’s enticingly bright set renders the Wicklow Mountains as an Emerald City playground, where, propelled by trampoline pockets, Irish peasants leap around in Niamh Lunny’s Technicolor costumes, or exit by sliding down a hill.

It’s a lark, yes, and while kids will get a kick out of one background character who keeps a sheep tucked under his arm, some signifier-sensitive grown-ups will look at Murfi’s lampooned stage-Irish stereotypes and wonder if they’re the sign of a more confident nation. The grimmer resonance of “dear auld Ireland” in the Wearing of the Green as “the most distressful country that ever yet was seen” might undermine such efforts of self-definition.

That’s certainly not the note the production wants to sound, which dashes, drifts and dances over Conor Linehan’s excellent live piano accompaniment while its leads strike poses, its choruses bleat in comic unison and performers double-up as winningly rickety scenery. But though they treat it all as a merry family entertainment, the play, the plot and its very lengthy running time resist it.

As Beamish, Rory Nolan hits a self-aware balance, amusingly square-jawed and stentorian as the escaped rebel whose crimes – and death sentence – are pinned to Arrah’s big-hearted lover, Shaun the Post. Aaron Monaghan is great too as the spry Shaun, who best walks the line between ironic distance and genuine investment in Boucicault’s sentimental and witty lines. Mary Murray makes a fetchingly seditious Arrah, somehow more potently feminine than even Mary O’Driscoll’s Fanny Power, and among a fluently physical ensemble, Gerard Walsh stands out as a tender British sympathiser.

Murfi works best when his physical reading compliments the wit of the words, as when Beamish is counselled, “disguise is valueless” and a tiger-rug raises a thumb of approval.

But some embellishments, such as animated portraits, feel restless while others are overcomplicated.

Sadly, the production gets hung up in the climactic "sensation scene" (literally, with actors dangling uncertainly on wires) and for all that admirable energy, you feel the friction of treating Arrah-na-Pogueas a classy pantomime and the stirrings of the play's rebellion against it. Boucicault is for life, remember, not just for Christmas.

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Runs until February 5