Moving City
Smock Alley Theatre
****

Maeve Higgins plays it fast and loose with what constitutes a "play" in this love letter to Dublin, and more power to her. Arriving on a Dublin Bike, she warms to her subject of life in London while performing the world's most nonchalant striptease.

Higgins makes ado about going "off-script", with cheeky nods to the "fourth wall" and the theatrical versus stand-up world, but Moving City is perfectly pitched, heartfelt and hilarious, delivered with the Cork woman's usual self-deprecating, dead-pan charm.

Despite London’s fast pace (“It’s hard to convince people that you’re worth knowing . . . people are busy . . . they have jobs – remember those?”) and vibrant dating scene (“I was on a date with an adult male who also knew that we were on a date”), Higgins can’t help but miss Dublin, where we’ve had “the same eight hipsters since 2008”. A delightful debut from Ireland’s next great “playwright”.

Ends Sept 21