Theatre review: The Fifth Step

Back to @sohoplace, the theatre with a name so current it thinks it's figured out what the "F" stands for in TFI Friday, for David Ireland's latest play. And while one of the characters is a lapsed Catholic and the other embraces Protestantism during the course of the story, this sees the playwright widen his scope from the legacy of the Troubles that has been the backdrop to his previous work. Not that Luka (Jack Lowden) and James (Martin Freeman) don't have their own troubled histories, but theirs are with alcohol. Luka has just joined Alcoholics Anonymous and in the opening scene, following a discussion about the importance of choosing the right sponsor in which James could be construed to be pitching for the job, he does indeed ask the older man to mentor him. The sometimes fractious and combative relationship that follows starts to get even more personal once they reach The Fifth Step of the programme.

Theatre review: Ulster American

With a name like David Ireland, you can imagine that the playwright who specialises in controversy-courting stories about how the Troubles have left Northern Ireland with collective PTSD might attract a certain kind of American fan. If that is part of the inspiration for his latest play, it would seem to confirm suspicions that some vocal Irish-Americans care more about appearing to belong to a culture than they do about actually knowing the first thing about Irish history. Equally under the microscope and subject to ridicule is the left-leaning British theatre establishment that's championed his brutal form of comedy in recent years, as Ulster American throws together theatre people from America, England and Northern Ireland in a violent mix of hypocrisy and misunderstanding. Ruth (Louisa Harland) is a rising Northern Irish playwright whose latest play is getting a starry London premiere from director Leigh (Andy Serkis.)

Theatre review: Not Now

When a planned revival of last year's Yes So I Said Yes fell through, the Finborough Theatre avoided going dark for a month by scheduling the London premiere of another David Ireland play, his recent short comedy Not Now. It's a story that almost feels like it could have been inspired by a running Twitter joke about Jonjo O'Neil's 2012 Richard III, as it opens with aspiring Belfast actor Matthew (Matthew Blaney) rehearsing the opening soliloquy, and trying not to pronounce the first word as "NOY." He's got up early to rehearse his speech because he's flying to London later in the day to audition for RADA, and he feels like he should deliver it in a laboured English accent he associates with classical performances of Shakespeare (he's also able-bodied but putting on an exaggerated hunchback and limp, so never mind it not getting him into drama school, he'd have been cancelled before his career even began.)

Theatre review: Yes So I Said Yes

David Ireland's plays see modern-day Northern Ireland as a place suffering from an identity crisis and collective PTSD from the Troubles; his viciously dark comedy takes on a Kafkaesque surreal journey in this English premiere of an earlier play, Yes So I Said Yes. Alan "Snuffy" Black (Daragh O’Malley) was a loyalist paramilitary in his youth, and spent some time in prison for an unspecified, but according to him fairly trivial, number of terrorist killings. Released into a country that no longer defaults to violence, he's a lonely old man who feels marginalised, depressed, and unfamiliar with the world around him, a situation which comes to a head when his neighbour's dog starts waking him up every night at 3am with his barking. But his neighbour (Owen O’Neill) insists there is no dog and, no longer sure if he's imagining things, Snuffy hopes a doctor can help him. Or, if not a doctor, Eamonn Holmes.

Stage-to-screen review: Lights Up - Sadie

It's back to the BBC's virtual theatre festival for what must be one of the most-anticipated entries: David Ireland is the most recent playwright to contribute to the Royal Court's dubious history of plays where babies meet a violent end, so he comes with a certain amount of notoriety. So far we've had plays that had already been seen by live audiences in one form or another; Sadie is one rescued from obscurity by the Lights Up season, as it had been commissioned by Cyprus Avenue's star Stephen Rea for his own company, only to be cancelled by lockdown. The BBC and Lyric Theatre Belfast (where Conleth Hill's production was filmed) stepped in to ensure the show (presumably slightly rewritten as it includes a few references to Covid-19 and lockdown) could be seen after all. A kind of memory play, it begins with middle-aged office cleaner Sadie (Abigail McGibbon) conjuring up her long-dead uncle Red (Patrick Jenkins,) a Catholic communist who'd married into her Protestant Northern Irish family but largely stayed out of their political conflicts.

Theatre review: Cyprus Avenue

Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone is currently directing both shows at the Royal Court, and both feature people's minds being fractured by paranoia. X might take us to the future in the main house but Upstairs Cyprus Avenue is dominated by the past, and the sectarian Troubles that have defined Northern Ireland for centuries. Black comedies don't come much blacker than David Ireland's play about Eric (Stephen Rea,) an Ulster loyalist who's spent his life fighting the IRA and hating all Catholics. Now there's a peace in which neither side got everything they wanted, and he's not sure what the country's identity is or, by extension, his own. This crisis has been bubbling under the surface until he sees his newborn granddaughter and becomes convinced that she's actually Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams in disguise, leading a charge to invade Protestant homes.