Famine Fortune – the one about the last potato in Ireland falling into the hands of a half-wit and his hungry brother-in-law (Steel Harbour Productions)

Titanic jokes are still poor taste in Northern Ireland, but new play Famine Fortunes tests the comedy water with famine-related humour and – according to Belfast audiences – passes with flying colours.

The conceit behind Jamie Phillips’s play is that two Irish working-class men have come into possession of the last potato in Ireland during the famine. It presents a great opportunity to escape the blight forever, and a huge challenge not to be severely punished by the spud’s previous owner.

Jimmy and Mickey (Tyler Barr and Jay Green) live in the same small dwelling. Jimmy labours. His brother-in-law Mickey is widowed, work shy and (humorously) naïve. Working shifts for a boorish Englishman is their only chance of earning enough to survive. Otherwise, they have no food, no jobs, no prospects and no hope. Their home is sparsely furnished, and the cupboards are bare of everything other than a candle and some matches that regularly get lit in memory of their departed sister/wife.

The comedy is a bit patchy during the first few establishing scenes, but then the laughs reach pleasingly farcical levels when the English baddie appears on stage: George Glasby dressed in a bright red coat and modelled on an extravagant pantomime-sized John Bull. His presence – and his search of the compact property – leads to anatomical humour (there are only so many places you can hide a small potato) which delighted the Black Box audience. The arrival of Dopey Joe (Jamie Phillips) introduces further mirth and pathos as the village idiot and willing scapegoat takes the fall for desperate Jimmy and eejit Mickey.

Phillips has great comic timing as Joe, while Green has fun exploring the consequences of Mickey’s string of ill-advised actions. Famine Fortune is at its most effective when it wholeheartedly embraces its anti-English sentiment and bounces the rest of the cast off the impressively cartoonish Glasby. The sense of exploitation is cemented when the one-hour performance concludes by playing Sinead O’Connor’s song Famine.

Directed by Luke Mosley, Steel Harbour Productions recently toured Famine Fortunes through Armagh and Belfast.