ALSO PLAYING
Cyprus Avenue (Peacock Theatre, Dublin ) by David Ireland is not just a black comedy, it’s a savage, hilarious disembowelling of narrow tribalism. And it has an astonishing central performance from Stephen Rea as Eric, a Protestant loyalist so paranoid about republicans he believes his five-week-old granddaughter is not just a Fenian but Gerry Adams. He knows he’s right as everyone from Obama to the Pope is a Fenian. The one thing Eric is sure about is that he’s non-negotiably British, not Irish. His madness is not the wild madness of a raving lunatic, but the quietly logical madness of somebody sure that the whole world is against him. Not that he has anything against Catholics; they’re just wrong about everything. ‘Without prejudice we’re nothing’ he says. ‘If we don’t discriminate we don’t survive.’ His black English psychiatrist confuses Eric by insisting she’s British, not African – those happy, stupid disorganised people as Eric calls them. He has a major identity crisis with people in England who call themselves Irish, while his own tribe in Ireland call themselves British. One comic highlight is his account of an encounter with a Catholic who, he suspects, might be a homosexual. That leads to a ludicrously funny encounter with Slim, a homicidal Protestant maniac. There’s a dreadful inevitability about the outcome of this psychopathic mania, played out with the psychiatrist (Wunmi Mosaku), Eric’s wife (Julia Dearden) and his daughter (Amy Molloy). But it’s in small scale what was acted out with the same logical lunacy against the whole population for 40 years by two tribes brandishing their identity and making everyone pay for their fears and ideals. The Abbey Theatre and Royal Court production is directed with precision by Vicky Featherstone.