Chris Lee's view of the world he lives in (a city in 1998)is bleak indeed. Man and woman have less power of survival than bacteria and no apparent say over their actions or interactions. They live in a world created and presided over by a careless god, in which sex and death seem largely indistinguishable from one another and where humans appear to have virtually no ability to communicate except through sex, death, drugs or drink.
Mr Lee's dramatic presentation of his empty world is, further, offered in terms that seem to have little theatrical validity. Theatre has been validly described as a means of involving its audience's intellect and emotion in equal terms so that catharsis, if production and performance are right, can be achieved by joining or sharing the experience. Brian Brady's production here is elegantly and efficiently staged in a clever setting by Paul McCauley, well lit by Paul Keogan and the acting (given the paucity of emotional and intellectual hooks in the piece) is superbly good. But the whole is broken into 20 or more disjointed "scenelets" (like a revue but without the variations of tone that a revue should have) so that there is no trace of any narrative impetus to drive the thing along, and precious little content beyond cliche or banality to engage mind or heart along the way.
The world is peopled by an enraged and disillusioned doctor (Olwen Fouere), her incommunicative artist daughter (Catherine Mack) who beds a young man who buys one of her works from her uninteresting exhibition and then, when the young man (Chris McHallem) is shot by a contract killer (Pat Laffan), takes photographs of the corpse.
There is a mysterious computer boffin (Andrew Bennett), young Gordon (Robert Price) and his elderly demanding father (Des Nealon).
It is all as pretentiously enigmatic as its title and, for all the qualities of production and performance, is probably best avoided by those of us glad and determined to stay in the real word and with real theatre.
Runs until May 16th. Booking on 01-8787222
