Endings.

Cube, Project Arts Centre

★★★☆☆

When a dissatisfied man meets the devil at a crossroads, as Faust discovered long ago, an unwise bargain is likely to be made. In his ambitious gig-theatre play for Springheel Productions, Fionntán Larney smoothly plays two dealmakers, yielding a different microphone for each. Through one he becomes Henry, a young man struggling to express his rage (“I’m okay. I’m totally good”). The other is used for an affluent Dublin version of Mephistopheles, who sounds like an expensive sweater twisted through a voice modulator (“I can’t get over how cute your dad is,” he says, condescendingly).

As in his excellent 2018 musical, Beat, Larney uses the rhythmic eloquence of hip hop to weave a world of suppressed male emotion. We see Henry, a rapper gnawed by grief, and given up on performing, use the Faustian pact to reignite his music career, against slick compositions that whip mixed feelings into coherent flows. In the keyboard glitter of one song he is pulled between a new life and an old one, between hopeful text messages and ignored voicemails.

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For a story yearning articulation, the playscript’s reliance on offstage voices occasionally leaves Henry without direct interaction, while an audience overly familiar with the Faust legend might find the plot, much like the obvious inversions in Larney’s lyrics (“You never see it coming / And you never see it go,” he sings, during a break-up song), feeling predictable. “Henry, Henry, don’t you see?” goes one refrain. The all-too-easy answer for everyone else might be yes.

Continues at Projects Arts Centre, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until Saturday, September 16th