A Play, a Pie and a Pint returns, but is the first play of the season any good? Lorna Irvine reviews.
Does playwright David Ireland have some sponsorship deals pending with fast food outlets? The reason I ask is that his previous show for PPP, Most Favoured, focused on an earthy angel with a penchant for KFC meals. This, the opener for the Autumn season, has a central character who can't get enough of Greggs sausage rolls and cakes.
But if his last character was of the angelic persuasion, Ireland's latest hero (anti-hero?) is a balaclava-wearing kidnapper- albeit a bumbling, erratic type with a strange motivation which becomes clear towards the end. Hunter Baxter (Paul Riley) may have held the Northern Ireland First Minister, Protestant Paul Cupples (Robert Jack) in a locked room with his Deputy First Minister, Catholic Patsy McMillan (Veronica Leer) - but he wants to get a peaceful dialogue going.
What starts promisingly enough, with plenty of dark, stinging material involving Hitler's comic potential and hunger striker Bobby Sands, soon becomes broad, predictable farce. All subtlety long since gone, a gag about the horror film Saw is stretched beyond credibility. In spite of some neatly choreographed sequences with Jack and Leer, bickering about national identity, religion and vegetarianism like a husband and wife straight out of a screwball comedy, they feel like mere stereotypes. The pathos arrives too late, almost like an afterthought.
Phillip Breen's direction cannot be faulted, as he has got the most out of a fine trio with lovely timing, but unlike Most Favoured, Ireland's script, as with the gelatinous snacks alluded to, has a lot of filling, and too much gristle.
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