Honest review: time for a profanity-laden lunchbreak, perhaps?

Honest ★★★ 
Bewley's Café Theatre, Dublin  

First staged in a Northampton pub in 2010, and layered with acrid thoughts and harder profanities than a Bewleys lunchtime audience might readily expect, DC Moore’s short monologue may actually be more quaint than it appears: a mini morality play.

Its cynical teller, Dave, is a man who cannot tell a lie in a world of blinking incompetents, careening down a destructive path that may lead him either to calamity or compromise.

That the first person to bear the brunt of his honesty is his 10-year-old nephew, proudly presenting a drawing, gives you some idea of the severity of this policy.

He also happens to be a civil servant, working at the Department of Inclusion and Social Affairs, an ironic appointment for sure, even if his lacerating descriptions of Governmental process spare nobody. His department, Strategic and Tactical Development (merrily reduced to an acronym), is an ecosystem where geeks abound without natural predators. His boss is a nice-but-dim jargon spouter. A ludicrously over-promoted colleague is “another cancer in the bloodstream of the civil service”.

A fluent misanthrope and outsider, played with conspiratorial charm by Kevin Murphy (who also keeps a tricky Welsh accent in firm command), Dave has learned to keep his own counsel while avoiding outright hypocrisy. But, ferociously drunk at his colleague’s party, the damn of politesse finally bursts, leading to a drunken London odyssey: a destructive, straight-talking bender.

Staged against a corporate façade, designed by Andrew Murray, which looms down like a sheer drop, the play can seem to glory in nihilism – at one point Dave fantasises about being consumed in the fireball of 9/11.

But really it glories in solipsism. Understandably, we only hear Dave’s interpretation of events, and his everyman exasperation has a sneer of superiority. Director David Horan and Murphy, a subtle performer, militate against it with an engaging production and some expertly signalled awkwardness. How honest is Dave being with himself, they hint?

There are echoes here of the heroic bad behaviour in early Conor McPherson or Mark O’Rowe, but there’s also a sly layer of political satire as Dave marauds through “the heart of government”, perceiving – and perpetuating – social exclusions which, post-Brexit, acquire a sharper sting.

“There is just chaos,” he says of government and, by extension, the world. He may mean that sincerely, and in battered times it becomes easier to believe him, but Moore’s lesson is in understanding the difference between being honest and speaking the truth.

- Ends Nov 26