Enda Walsh’s playwrighting panache resides with families living in chronic isolation , ritually reenacting the story of what brought them to that point. If that is what excites you, especially in the Irish / English context, then Walworth Farce may very well be what you will enjoy. Others may well find the story rarely comprehensible, deeply sad, laced with delusion and cruel. The ‘play within a play’ idea is tough going for any audience but after a real world character enters the scene and for a few moments lifts accessibility and spirits, the complexity and rat-a-tat dialogue returns quickly making following it all hard to sustain and soon the rest is downhill until it all happily ends.

To be sure the acting is complete with all three major role players – Michael Glenn Murphy, Tadhg Murphy and Raymond Scannell – doing excellent jobs, with Murphy particularly outstanding. The set is well thought through and the ability to create isolated scenes in one of the areas is effective (or was it scenes within scenes within scenes).

Sure, this is what our great festival is all about – being challenged in ways we may not the other 23 1/2 months of every two years but as successful as Walworth Farce may have been in Great Britain, like many other arrivals from the mother country, it’s a fish out of water here.

Kryztoff Rating  2K