A hit at the Dublin Theatre Festival last month, Robert Massey's comedy-thriller about down-at-heel cabbies and a ruthless casino kingpin turns out to be a surprisingly pedestrian affair. Directed by Jim Culleton for the Irish new writing company Fishamble, it's wryly amusing. But the tension painstakingly accumulated in the first act dribbles away in the second, until the action stutters to a lame and predictable conclusion. And though there is a discreet anecdotal critique of modern mores among the humour and the threats of violence, it's too gentle to make much impact.
Carl (Alan King), a widowed former teacher-turned-taxi driver and gambling addict, owes local gangster Jack (Bryan Murray, pictured standing, with King) big money. Jack's patience is running out - and, aided by his meathead son Fred and a baseball bat, he makes it emphatically clear to the hapless and impecunious Carl that the debt must be repaid, in full, by midnight. In panic and desperation, Carl turns to his fellow cabbies - his father-in-law George, a one-time associate of Jack, and the priapic lothario Two in the Bush, so-called because he always has a bird in the hand. Together, through a blend of bluff, brinkmanship and dumb luck, they contrive to extricate Carl from a situation in danger of turning horribly sticky - and maybe even to turn his predicament to advantage.
In this boys' world, women are noticeably absent - either ill, like Jack's wife, playing away, like Fred's, or dead. Without them, the men are rudderless and infantile, ruled by their appetites for gaming or womanising and prone to preening displays of self-regard. The doltish Fred bonds with Bush over their mutual vanity, little suspecting that Bush has plucked Fred's own bird; the flailing, paunchy Carl is an object of pity and ridicule, while Jack and George nurse decades-old grudges and confront each other like playground bullies.
In highlighting the debt-ridden downside of the Celtic Tiger economy, Massey also touches on the topical. But despite fine performances all round, the play's ride is a meandering one that winds up at an unexciting location. It's good for a few laughs, but it never gets out of first gear.
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