Ulster American – an insecure American actor, a profit-driven English theatre director and a stubborn playwright walk into a living room and it’s no joke! (Bright Umbrella at Sanctuary Theatre until Saturday 6 September)

David Ireland’s script for Ulster American constructs a pressure cooker plot between an actor, a director and a playwright. Each one of them is state of high stress.

Jay Conway is an insecure American actor who is more than chuffed to have been cast to perform a play by a Northern Irish playwright on an English stage, though his grasp of British/Irish history is even worse than his Belfast accent. Andrew McClay has the measure of this brash character, with a patterned shirt open to his navel, establishing an alpha male authority with pelvic thrusts, lunges, and clutching an Oscar as he walks around like a phallic symbol of deeply hidden inadequacy.

The action takes place in the living room of the English director’s house. Leigh Carter, played by James Boal, knows that whatever Jay’s faults and weaknesses, his involvement in the project is box office gold. So Leigh goes to great lengths to downplay the horror of the extremely provocative conversation that precedes the arrival of the playwright. While McClay must keep Jay running at full tilt, Boal can give Leigh the emotional space to act as a mediator before properly losing his cool in the second half. It’s a delightful transformation.

Ruth Davenport is on edge due to an altercation that hospitalised her mother before the playwright hopped on a plan to fly across for the start of rehearsals. To add English insult to mansplaining injury, she’s affronted by Leigh’s insistence that he knows her identity (Irish) better than she does (British), and is appalled by Jay’s idiotic questions about a script he clearly doesn’t understand. Caroline Curran plays a blinder with this stubborn and belligerent character who refuses to be scorned, ultimately mounting a ferocious fight back. Well known for comedy roles, Curran is equally comfortable and has equal stage presence when tackling darker material.

Trevor Gill’s direction gives Ulster American a consistent fast pace, understanding that the strong (and at times disgusting) concepts that Jay introduces don’t need space to breath, but can be left to linger unresolved while the next dramatic hand grenade is thrown into the room.

PJ Davey fills the Sanctuary Theatre’s stage with a modern living room set, complete with soft furnishings and theatrical posters and props. Angling the side walls might have given a sense of extra depth and perspective, and would have provided better sight lines for audience members seated in the left- and right-most pews.

While there are no jokes in the script, the execution is laugh out loud hilarious. The start of the final scene happens out of sight, and there’s added entertainment with the delayed gasps and tittering when not everyone in the audience spots the clue about what’s happening at the same time.

David Ireland’s play has much to say about misogyny, identity and stereotypes. The men fail to live up to their self-confessed inner feminism. Ruth fails to live up to the stereotype of being a lefty luvvie. Ireland explores hate speech and where offence becomes markedly extreme, and expect to be challenged by strong language, graphic violence, and references to sexual assault. Last played in Belfast back in 2019, the references to Brexit and Palestine haven’t dated at all.

By a wild coincidence, arriving at the east Belfast Sanctuary Theatre for last night’s performance, I was too late to snag one of the handy spots in the parking bay on the other side of Castlereagh Street. So I drove on up to the next block and parked on the road, just outside number 66, where David Ireland’s note in the theatre programme informs me that he lived when writing most of the Ulster American script.

Written in 2018, the inclusion of a misunderstood and disregarded voice of a right-leaning, Brexit-supporting, Ulster protestant playwright adds a lot of real-world resonance to the meta-narrative with a play about a theatrical powder keg blowing up in an actual theatre (and it’s rare to see a David Ireland play that doesn’t end up with blood splattered across the set and the cast). His take down of commercial theatre, the power dynamic between a director and other creatives, the clout of a star cast member, and the pressure on playwrights to bend their vision to suit all the other creative opinions in the rehearsal room is uncompromising. Critics also don’t escape Ireland’s vicious pen: “keep the good ones as pets” and kill the rest.

This production of Ulster American revels in the discomfort of the trio of characters. The cast’s confidence in moving through the fast-paced scenes delivers a thrilling 75 minutes of thought-provoking theatre. It’s an ambitious production that deserves to be seen by more people than will fit into the Sanctuary Theatre’s current space (watch out for the renovations happening next year). Try to catch it before the run ends on Saturday 6 September.

Rehearsal photos credit: Melissa Gordon 

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