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Monster? By Emily Gillmor Murphy (Theatre Upstairs) is practically a manifesto about letting people live their chosen lives and not imposing fairytale expectations of marriage, children and happy-ever-afters on everyone. Ellen (Aisling O’Mara), after a drunken sex session, is pregnant or, as she puts it, she has an alien inside her body with more rights than she has. And she doesn’t want to be a mother or married – ever. The father is a conscientious but criminally ignorant young policeman (Jamie O’Neill). There’s plenty of dramatic material here but a lot of the acting is highdecibel speech that matches the overwritten dialogue. Everything is seen in extremes. There’s Ellen’s workmate Ru, bisexual friend of two recently married homosexuals. His wife tolerates his extracurricular sex and he proves it by elaborating on his sexual high jinks. Michael Glenn Murphy’s Ru is about as funny as Mickey Rooney’s disastrous Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast At

Tiffany’s. And in case we haven’t been attentive, the three characters also condense their lives into fairytales. Ru considers Ellen’s plight unfair and it’s also unfair that his two married gays can’t have children. Actually, it’s about as unfair as the inability of two prize stallions to produce a derby winner. But don’t panic. I’m sure you can see a solution here. Runs until April 29.