Emerald Germs

Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin

**

Are psychopaths born or are they made? This has been a preoccupation of Pat McCabe's ever since The Butcher Boy, his wicked satire on mid-century small town Ireland. He has frequently returned to those folds of cruelty, humiliation and the troubling escape of fantasy, such as the similarly scabrous Emerald Germs of Ireland, a novel that bludgeoned sentimental Ireland (Emerald Gems) in a wild, cartoonish frenzy.

For Livin’ Dred’s 10th anniversary production, McCabe has adapted his book as a splenetic two-hander, a portrait of a monster in which actors slip briskly between crackpot narration and multiple roles.

This was a great idea in 1992, when he brought The Butcher Boy to the stage as Frank Pig Says Hello. But today it seems like a parody of a parody. "I did it," says Padraic McIntyre as Pat McNab, the would-be parricidal maniac, clutching a two-pronged pitchfork. Perhaps Christy Mahon never returned his loy.

When Aaron Monaghan arrives, as a mysterious turf man, the points are spelled out heavily, announcing not just the plot of Hitchcock's Psycho, but the "picture house" Americanisation of Ireland's imagination. "There was this fella, d'y'see, he was haunted be himself," says the turfman. "The worst kind of monsters are the ones that be's inside. Id, they call it: the subconscious monster that lives in the mind." With that comprehensive synopsis of the play, the turfman himself resembles a terrifying monster: a film student after a psychology module.

Such lines spell out the main problem early; that for all its madcap aspirations, the piece is actually doggedly concrete. It moves through a laborious sequence of encounters, all marvellously performed by Monaghan, who, as simpering love interest Bridie, is probably the most desirable woman onstage since the first Juliet.

The turfman begets Pat’s scowling headscarfed mother begets creepy harridan Mrs Tubridy begets the school bully begets a cowboy (actually a sheep farmer) begets a humiliating teacher and so on. This procession feels schematic though, every character arriving with a burst of surprise, from the cupboards or wall portraits of Micky McGuirk’s bedroom set, staying too long, then disappearing under the bed or up a chimney. But the dialogue is flabby, every grisly dispatch is a matter of routine, and, without the outside eye of a director (none is credited), the pace drags severely over 90 minutes.

The shame of it is that there is a good show in here somewhere, and it could still be chiselled free with a ruthless rewrite, a director and particularly a movement director – in short, with money. Without McCabe we wouldn't have Enda Walsh or Martin McDonagh, playwrights who again took his buzzsaw to the Irish psyche. McCabe and Livin' Dred deserve similar respect. If Ireland doesn't invest properly in such talents, we truly are psychos. Ends tomorrow