In the present-day Wexford of Billy Roche's latest play, the radio only plays oldies, no one has a mobile phone, and neighbours leave pints of milk on each other's doorsteps on their way to mass. Roche is confronting a changing Ireland here: the unseen villain of the story is a thuggish developer who is trying to buy up all the town's family businesses, including the homely barber's shop in which the play is set. But above all, On Such As We is driven by a wilful nostalgia.
With his Wexford Trilogy, written in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a sense that Roche was writing the life of his beloved home town as it was happening. This play, which could form a fourth chapter in that series, portrays a Wexford that doubtless no longer exists.
Oweney is a barber, like his father and grandfather before him. Estranged from his wife and family, he lets the rooms above the shop to two young loners, and endlessly serves cups of tea to his elderly friend Richie and Richie's nephew Eddie, who does odd thug jobs for the dastardly developer PJ.
A love story develops between Oweney and Maeve, PJ's beautiful young wife, who has just opened up a boutique across the square. Their dalliance is paralleled by a sweetly innocent romance between Oweney's lodger Leonard and the local orphan girl Sally.
It sounds sappy, and at times it is, but because Roche's affection for his characters is matched by his skill in writing subtly brilliant dialogue, it's hard not to be drawn into his unabashedly sentimental project. Under Wilson Milam's direction, the ensemble cast take things at their ease, not least when delivering Roche's throwaway nuggets of heartbreak: "It's just that I'm running out of time with her," Frank McDonald's Richie mumbles about his dying wife as he shuffles out the door. The best lines are reserved for Brendan Gleeson's beautifully realised Oweney; he could easily have stolen the show, but Gleeson keeps everything shambling and low-key.
Some things simply don't work: several transitions in the second half call on characters to reappear too quickly, David Herlihy's Eddie tries too hard to be loutish, and despite Jason Gilroy's valiant performance, the character of the tortured painter Matt is cliched. And yet, as the snow falls gently at the window of Blaithin Sheerin's ingenious, higgledy-piggledy set and Christmas carols play, a warmth is generated by Roche and this company that is irresistible.
· Until January 26. Box office: 00 353 1 878 7222.
