DUCK

Ustinov Studio, Bath

Three stars

Ireland is a fascinating place for the English. We have recently discovered that across the Irish Sea lies a country whose people, whilst speaking the same language, are strangely and magnetically alien. Combined with its much vaunted literary tradition, anything associated with the green, white and gold is currently irresistible to the average English arts lover. It is therefore easy to suppose that the fairy-tale leap which Stella Feehily's first play made from slush pile to stage at the Royal Court was undoubtedly facilitated by its Irish setting.

It tells the story of Cat (Ruth Negga), also known as Catherine, also known as Duck - the latter nickname bestowed on her by her boyfriend because of her big feet. A young Dubliner, she works in a drinking club and lives with a drug dealer. But their relationship is wearing thin as he neglects her in favour of his mates and the pub, and she vents her frustration with him by torching his jeep - an incident which lends the play an explosive opening. Meanwhile she slips into an affair with a middle-aged writer, and indulges in some adolescent soul-searching with her best friend and drinking buddy Sophie (Elaine Symons). The play ends with Sophie and Cat setting off, like so many young Irish kids before them, for the bright lights of London.

In the same way that Cat is trying to find herself, so is the play. It lacks both an overarching form or any sense of rhythm. Even a slice of life needs more structure than this, and like its central character, the play stumbles blindly from one scene to the next without any clear sense of purpose other than a desperate desire to remain the centre of attention. It is too unformed, and so busy trying to be gritty pace Pinter, Welsh and Doyle that it omits to offer either insight or engagement. Its primary sin, however, is that too much of it treads the predicable ruts of modern Irish drama. For example, the men in Cat's life are straight out of the Chapter 1 of the Manual of Clichéd Irish Writing. Dublin has over a million inhabitants, yet Feehily opts to reinforce once again the myth that the city's male population consists entirely of brutish Northsiders in the drugs trade and louche middle-aged authors who drink at the Shelbourne and lust after nubile adolescents.

That is not to say that Feehily does not have talent. When not reaching for off-the-shelf caricatures, her characterisation shows some depth. Cat's friend Sophie is a more finely drawn and interesting character than Cat herself, with a bubbling undertow of adolescent anguish leaking out around her tight smile. A play focused on her would be well worth seeing. Feehily also writes some good naturalistic dialogue (even though some of the actors manage to make it sound staler than a week-old loaf), and she has a remarkable ability to capture the knots and grain of Irish family life with a verisimilitude which will lead many English onlookers to mistake her social realism for parody, unaware that Irish domesticity often really is that weird.

Max Stafford-Clark's production also has some fine aspects to it - the moment when Cat's boyfriend (Karl Shiels) reveals that he knows who torched his car during a shared bath offers the sort of bleeding edge drama one has come to expect of his Out of Joint theatre company. Johnathan Fensom's ingenious set opens and closes like a Swiss Army knife to furnish forth a host of different locales at the drop of a hat. And even if the older actors in the cast deliver their lines with all the animation of a tired dishcloth, the younger performers - particularly Elaine Symons as Sophie - have a verve and spit which lends the energy of youth to the piece.

Stella Feehily may well have a really good play in her - but Duck isn't it. And as I think about all the other plays that lie mouldering in the Royal Court's slush pile, I cannot shake off the sneaking feeling that if it had been set in Birmingham rather than Dublin, Duck might well still be mouldering there alongside them.

Toby O'Connor Morse