It happened in London in the late 80s. Now it's eating Dublin alive - the boom that has seen property prices double and more in the last three years, with semi-derelict old residential areas in the city razed and redeveloped as apartment blocks and multi-storey car parks. Dublin playwright Jimmy Murphy feels bitterly about the little people, the old salt of Dublin town whom he here portrays in an ancient, run-down pub, with its tawdry trophies behind the bar.

Unknown to the dwindling clientele, the dishevelled landlord has sold the pub for a cool £750,000 - and with it the crumbling house next door. Sadly, his sitting tenant of 40 years, a widower and newly retired bin- man, had been planning to buy the house with his retirement package. Stoking the marinated debate is the bankrupt, vodka-alcoholic proprietress of the nearby hair salon, who swears she'll never sell out. A young barmaid, herself hard-pressed to pay the mortgage on her apartment, generally nurses wounds.

There's a lot of sozzled schmaltz in the writing, spiced up with some downright queasy examples of the Dublin dialect, which Murphy gleefully lards onto the dialogue. After the landlord's deal is revealed, the comic and dramatic tone slackens off considerably, into a series of long, maudlin farewells, like wringing a dishrag of every last drop.

Then, suddenly and paradoxically, the stage is electrified by the young developer, who comes to collect the keys and shut the place down. The sheer bombast of Don Wycherly's huge performance, in five hilarious minutes of brutal raze 'n' build philosophy, verbally demolishes every sentiment in the play, and with them, many sacred cows of the Dublin architectural landscape. With punchline after punchline, he wipes the stage with the other characters, sending the audience home cackling and, it has to be said, agreeing whole heartedly with him.

It's a real conundrum - this high-minded humour which devastates the whole moral purpose of the play. Murphy writes from direct experience of underclass Dublin, but one worries about the National Theatre's dramaturgical machinery in bringing a script like this to fruition. Certainly, this one runs aground in both Murphy's and director Jimmy Fay's confused instincts between wild-minded comedy and angry, feeling pathos.

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible

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