The House Keeper

Project Arts Centre, Dublin Previews until Apr 23 Opens Apr 24-May 12 8pm (Sat mat 3pm) €15-€25 01-8819613 projectartscentre.ie

In recent months the age-old confrontation between the haves and the have-nots has become ever more bitter. But while many would happily burn the bondholders or claim allegiance with the 99 per cent, few have taken the next logical step: the recently evicted should repossess the homes of the wealthy.

That, near enough, is the premise of Morna Regan’s new play for Rough Magic, her first since 2001’s Midden, in which an out-of-work single mother (Cathy Belton) breaks into the home of an affluent Manhattan shut-in (Ingrid Craigie) and refuses to leave.

It could be a human distillation of a worldwide protest: Occupy Fifth Avenue. Others might just call it burglary, but it says something about a cultural shift that our immediate sympathies are with the intruder. Regan reinforces this by creating residents of unparalleled nastiness: a wife and her chronically-ill husband whose passive-aggressive dependency and psychological torture are equal parts Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.

In desperate circumstances, though, everybody’s morality reaches an early breaking point and (amid several turned tables) the former tycoon, Hal (Robert O’Mahoney), makes a sinister proposal: “You get to move in, she gets to move out, I get to move on.”

Oh, Hal, you demon, what was your occupation?

Can't see that? Catch this: A Doll House Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin