It Only Ever Happens In The Movies

Peacock Theatre, Dublin

Some people make it all look so easy. An instant click. Effortless rapport. That combination of brave suggestion and winning acceptance that leads, with racing hearts, to the realisation of mutual desires. Such are the frustratingly elusive characteristics of group devising.

That makes the new National Youth Theatre show all the more daring. After years of staging adventurous interpretations of the funkier classics ( A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Seagull, A Dream Play)this year's production pairs director Mikel Murfi with a cast recruited from youth theatres throughout the country, charged with creating their own show from scratch in four weeks. It must have been a giddying, nervy rush and in both the admirable energy of the performance and in its garbled message, it shows.

Derek (Michael Noonan) – sweet 17 and never been kissed – is a movie obsessive with a soft spot for ice-cream. Such fixation with disposable treats may be a clue for the play's handling of its female characters who swirl through a stack of sequences – a Blind Datestyle gameshow, a dragged-up attempt to infiltrate their inner sanctum, an adjudicating panel for a chat-up line competition – either as a gallery of fantasies or complete mysteries. What do women want, our hero wonders. Beats me, Derek, but it seems a shame not to have consulted with the majority of your co-devisers.

True, at one late stage Kate Finnegan gamely remonstrates, “You have us all behaving like one- dimensional bimbos,” but dispelling these delusions with a girl whose only distinguishing trait is that she likes ice-cream doesn’t provide much of a counter-balance. Instead, the play’s vigorously physical and well choreographed scenes succumb to sequence with scant regard for consequence. It’s also why a wickedly funny cameo, by video, from Cillian Murphy inadvertently becomes the main speaking part, as though, flush with gratitude, no youth theatre thought to check if his membership had expired.

Handsomely and economically staged, the production allows for performances of immense spirit and the cast relish the hard snap of comedy. But in the tumble of movie recitations and rom-com formulae, their devising leans harder on the cliches we know, than the truths the stage helps us to discover. That only ever happens in the theatre, sometimes.

Run ended