Fathers generally had a rough time in 20th-century Irish male literature. Synge's Christy Mahon kills his Da - twice, writes Fintan O'Toole.

Joyce's Stephen Daedalus ponders the idea that paternity is a legal fiction. Brian Friel's Gar O'Donnell doubts whether he has any real connection with his father at all. Tom Murphy's Dada in A Whistle in the Dark is a living nightmare. Dark paternal shadows fall over the characters in much of John McGahern's fiction.

Da - Abbey Theatre

In this respect, Hugh Leonard's 1973 play Da, for all its obviously autobiographical elements, is also a variation on an Irish archetype. It hovers between intimate memories of real events and a bigger, mythic story.

On one side, there are specific reminders that this is a kind of theatrical memoir. The shape of the play is similar to Leonard's classic memoir, Home Before Night.

The central character, Charlie, is the adopted son of a Dalkey gardener and his wife. He is the same age as Leonard himself. And even if the audience knows none of this, it learns quite early on that Charlie is a playwright. This, clearly, is the author's own story.

On the other hand, the mythic element is strong. Leonard's first international success was the Joyce adaptation, Stephen D, and both the form and the content of Da remind us of this fact. Charlie, like Stephen, is pulled between alternative fathers, in his case the amiable, infuriatingly passive Da and the dry, intellectual Drumm, whose protégé he becomes.

What all of this means is that Da is a much tougher piece to stage than its reputation as a well-worn Irish comic classic might imply. The element of autobiography pulls it towards a kind of photographic realism but the mythic impulse demands a bigger brush and more sweeping strokes.

The comedy, moreover, is mostly of the subtle kind, the sort that is completely embedded in the action. Some of the funniest lines are not funny lines. Drumm's deadpan responses, simple phrases such as "Yes, I would" depend on minute movements of expression for their comic effect. They are, in cinematic terms, close-ups. Yet the broad thrust of the action is seen in wide shots. The form, moving with great skill from past to present and back again, deliberately prevents the tight focus of realism.

These challenges can be met, of course, and in Patrick Mason's new production, the first at the Abbey since Joe Dowling's in 1983, there are two consummate examples of how it is done. One is Anita Reeves's luminous portrayal of Da's wife, Maggie. The character is at one level an archetypal Irish mammy but the archetype is filled out with intimate and illuminating detail. Reeves fuses these two elements into one bustling, ferocious force, a portrayal so energetic and fast on its feet that it never freezes into mere cliché.

The other great success is John Kavanagh's Drumm. The character has his own play, A Life, and Kavanagh brings to it here the experience of playing that role two years ago. The result is that Kavanagh's Drumm is far richer and more complex than we have a right to expect from a character whose on-stage presence is largely confined to three short episodes. Drumm, the dry old stick, is filled with life, so that his sardonic, embittered personality becomes an intelligent man's response to the world as he finds it. One delightful effect is that Drumm becomes by far the funniest presence on stage.

Otherwise, though, these rich possibilities remain unfulfilled. Stephen Brennan's Da is a fine feat of acting. But because the character is for the most part so much older than the actor, it is impossible not to be aware of it all the time precisely as a feat. Every old man's movement is questioned by Brennan's young voice. The effect, in a play whose structure depends so much on the passage of time, is continually disconcerting.

Elsewhere, the balance between the real and the mythic is never quite struck. Ronan Leahy's Oliver is almost entirely cartoonish. Sean Campion and Alan Leech, as Charlie and his younger self, on the other hand, are too one-dimensionally realistic.

Neither seem to quite fit into Paul McCauley's beautifully dreamlike set, nor to feel at home in a play that is, essentially, a ghost story.

Da runs until September 21st. Tel: 01 8787222. Information and online booking: www.abbeytheatre.ie