Some Flood

Smock Alley Theatre

**

So, yeah, out of nowhere, there's this flood, and the only survivor is an Irish lad called Noah (Kevin Mooney). Adrift in junk, tinned beans, loneliness and meagre employment opportunities in Devious Theatre's new comedy, it's hard to tell whether the apocalypse makes any material difference to his life, now that he only has himself for company. That is literally the case in Mooney and John Doran's garrulous comedy, which pairs Noah with his mirror image, played by Eddie Murphy. Together, they plan to train for combat, discuss movies endlessly, and entertain dopey notions of repopulating the earth with hot celebrities: Survival of the laddest.

Doran (who also directs) makes them pointedly ridiculous, practising kung fu and porn fantasies in their boxer shorts, while giving this diagnosis of male fecklessness some imaginative sequences. Sadly, though, however committed the performers, there’s no dynamic in this split self, just an echo chamber of laddish prattle that must eventually be exhausted. “I need to up me game, evolve, develop,” says one of them, sagely. If only Noah had an arc.

Until Sep 12