The sporting play: hurling in to a theatre near you

'Bondi Beach Boy Blue' is the latest in a long line of sports-themed plays to hit Irish theatres in the past 20 years. Sara Keatingtracks their progress

THE SPORTS play has become a powerful genre in new Irish writing for the stage over the last 20 years, particularly in the commercial theatre, where sports lends popular appeal to what is increasingly seen as a niche and elitist art form. There have been plays about golf ( The Courseby Brendan O'Carroll), boxing ( Rintyby Martin Lynch), athletics ( The Making of Antigone Ryanby Martin Murphy), and even snooker (the excellent Hurricaneby Richard Dormer). Though there has yet to be a play about swimming, there have been two recent plays that were set in a simming pool (Enda Walsh's Penelope, which is currently on national tour and Big Telly's site-specific production of The Little Mermaid).

Meanwhile, there have been so many plays about football and rugby (from Paul Mercier's Studsto the unsurpassable Alone it Stands) that football and rugby plays deserve subgenres of their own.

Over the past decade, hurling has also been prominent in the world of sports plays. Charlie O'Neill's Rosie and Starwars(1997) and Hurl(2003) used hurling as a backdrop for exploring ethnic and intercultural identity in Ireland. Focusing on the relationship between settled and Traveller communities in the former, and native and asylum-seeking communities in the latter, Ireland's unique national sport was seen as conduit for expanding versions of national identity. In Mikel Murfi's The Last Days of Ollie Deasy(2000), meanwhile, the 1964 All-Ireland hurling final was elevated to mythic proportions by a narrative that loosely followed Homer's Odysseyin order to examine concepts of heroism in contemporary Ireland.

All three of these plays used the concept of sport to examine ideas of community and belonging, but they also used sport as a way to explore a new physical language in the theatre. Hurling's technical and tactical manoeuvres provided ample scope for breaking traditionally static storytelling techniques. In Hurl, for example, the on-pitch drama was enhanced by puppets, projection and a pulsating score by African percussion group Djembe.

Bondi Beach Boy Blue, which is currently playing at the new downstairs theatre space at the Tivoli Theatre, is the latest addition to the canon of hurling based plays. Set in Kilkenny, it follows the fate of teenage hurling hero Declan from Ballinasloe to Bondi Beach.

After he injures himself in the All Ireland semi-finals, he finds himself faced with the challenge of reshaping his identity away from the pitch, and he travels to Australia to do so, where he is far from his critical father and self-help-philosophy-spouting ex-girlfriend Lisa.

Bondi Beach Boy Blue, written by Benny McDonnell, is a coming-of-age story that draws on typical teenage anxieties: burgeoning sexuality, parental miscommunication, and the crux between fantasy and reality that determines the transition between adolescence and adulthood.

However, despite some poignant set-pieces it fails to exploit the opportunity for physical expression that the sporting play offers, and remains a conservative monologue play, its monotony broken only by varying voices.

In fairness to Donal Courtney’s production, the downstairs venue at the Tivoli Theatre, which has the atmosphere and acoustics of an air-raid shelter (the entrance is a tunnel of corrugated iron), does not serve the production well.

In such depressing environs, Courtney struggles to make his shoestring production transcend the threadbare. There is neither a set nor any attempt to evoke a location. Minimal lighting cues fail to suggest transitions in time or space, while the sound design extends to a CD soundtrack provided by The Guggenheim Grotto and the single sharp shriek of a whistle. There are a few gestures towards stylisation in a re-enactment of a semi-final foul, and in the second half Paul Connaughton and Chris Gallagher, who play Declan and his gombeen best-friend Gary, do some fake running, but they have neither the physical expertise of athletes or well-trained actors. Instead of enlivening the action, the physical turns farcical.

Ultimately Bondi Beach Boy Bluefails to exploit the potential in the sporting play, which carries its own inherent drama. At its most fundamental level, the sports theme in theatre provides a competing energy with the drama on stage. In sports there is natural conflict, a unifying action (to score or to cross the finish line), suspense and urgency (a ticking clock that can determine the outcome), and heroic characters (the last minute scorer, the victorious underdog).

Perhaps, particularly in the commercial theatre, the sports play needs to transcend the drama of the playing field. A theatre ticket can cost as much as ticket to Croker, and spectators will demand that it is just as good.

Bondi Beach Boy Blueis at the Tivoli Theatre, Dublin, until September 4