National Anthem

Baby Grand, Belfast

Northern novelist Colin Bateman – or simply Bateman, as his publishers have seen fit to re-brand him – specialises in fast-paced comic crime fiction, with plenty of bawdy fun and gleefully high body counts.

No surprises, then, that National Anthem, his first stage play, follows a similarly frenetic pattern.

Two former exiles – the overtly metrosexual, San Pellegrino-sipping Protestant musician Gary Miller (played by Stuart Graham) and tortured second-rate Catholic poet Dessie O’Hare (Miche Doherty) – have been hired by the government to come up with a national anthem for Northern Ireland that everyone can sing.

Bateman has chosen to mine a rich seam of absurdity: the post-conflict re-packaging of the North. It’s sold as a world-class destination “where you can get pannacotta and paninis on every corner”, but where the humble Ulster pasty – a fried disc of battered mince, long held in peculiar affection – is increasingly hard to find.

He is evidently determined to weave in a few shocking one-liners too. So George Best, Alex Higgins and Bobby Sands are characterised as “two drunks and an eating disorder”, while the badger has been chosen as our national mascot “because not everything here is black and white, and because you sometimes find a body in the road”.

It’s a bit tedious and effortful: there’s something of the schoolboy show-off about it.

The past is never too far away in Northern Ireland, and before long the stage is awash with dark secrets – “I’m not an informer,” protests Dessie, “just a bit of a gossip” – and rampant paranoia.

It’s pure mayhem, and the intensity of the knockabout action, not to mention the high-decibel exchanges between Gary and Dessie, feels overwhelming at times. But the arrival of a dissident republican in a badger suit, his stuffed tail wagging ridiculously behind him, strikes a splendidly surreal note.

And the scabrous humour is eventually abandoned for something altogether more uplifting, affectionate even, in the final singing of the anthem itself, which affirms that “we’re Northern Ireland, so we are!” The audience is asked to rise and join in.

That’s one way to guarantee a standing ovation.

Runs until October 30th

– Fionola Meredith