Smalltown Irish life was the black gold of playwriting in the 1990s with Brian Friel and Martin McDonagh the theatrical Guinness of the London and New York export markets. But Billy Roche, whose ‘Wexford Trilogy’ began at London’s Bush Theatre in 1988, stole a march on Friel’s backwards-looking ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ (1990) and McDonagh’s bleak Leenane trilogy (1996-97) – the first part of which returns this week to the Young Vic in an acclaimed revival.
After a long fallow period, Roche takes the helm himself for his new play ‘Lay Me Down Softly’, a slender, evocative portrait of a travelling boxing show which premiered at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 2008.
Bouts of flirting and fighting set the rhythm of life on Delaney’s Roadshow, and all comers are vivid and unwise. Gary Lydon’s Theo is the burly, tight-fisted manager, easily wound-up by his gorgeously sarky and manipulative girlfriend, Lily (Simone Kirby).
When Theo’s golden-haired daughter Emer (a nicely unreadable Pagan McGrath) turns up, years after they left her and her mother behind, Theo’s long friendship with his good-hearted old trainer Peadar (the excellent Michael O’Hagan) is strained by regret.
Roche’s Irish cast are mellifluous and perceptive: they make every cameo count. Dermot Murphy is tremendously touching as young boxing hopeful and odd-job man, Junior, a gentle stooping teenager unlikely to make it because of a foot injury.
It’s diffuse, gentle writing which lacks punch and heft but is full of wry sympathy for life’s belligerent victims. The writer’s eye for the detail is a gift to the talented actors, whose accuracy and emotional honesty delights. But this is featherweight, not heavyweight Roche – and a tad too unbalanced, in the way its point of view drifts through the six aimless characters, to be a great contender.