Gone to seed

Not being a mother himself, many of the gags in Fiona Looney's Dandelions go over Colin Murphy's head, but he can still see why it will be a huge hit

Fiona Looney's Dandelions is a bad play with a passable story and some good gags, almost exclusively about motherhood and housewifery. It goes down well with a busy Friday-night crowd at the Olympia, largely, but by no means exclusively, made up of women. They laugh at all the jokes – and at occasional moments that may not be supposed to be jokes – hang on Pauline McLynn's every facial twitch, and humm excitedly when Keith Duffy comes on stage bursting out of his shirt.

It gets a rousing response at the end, which is testament to two things: Looney writes some good lines, which are milked effectively by her cast; and her play is a paean to modern suburban mothers; a demographic not often placed centrestage.

Deirdre O'Kane and Pauline McLynn play housewife neighbours on The Close, a microscosm of Irish suburbia. Their lives are consumed with the routines imposed by caring for their households, demarcated by washing lines and school runs, clothed in tracksuits. There is no sign of their husbands or children though. O'Kane and McLynn are the Vladimir and Estragon of housewifery, their lives hinging upon their families who, like Godot, never appear. The two characters are essentially foils for Fiona Looney's observations on motherhood, the regular subject of Looney's Sunday Tribune column.

After a couple of over-extended scenes which largely consist of O'Kane acting as straight woman for McLynn's gags (never delivered without a nod or a wink to the audience, it seems), a new couple arrive next door, complete with their adopted Vietnamese baby.

The husband in the new couple (Keith Duffy) is an ex-boyfriend of O'Kane's character; due to a one-night stand after her marriage, he may or may not be the father of their eldest child.

So this appears to be the drama: a tale of infidelity and confused paternity, amongst neighbours stuck in dead-end suburbia. It could, briefly, be by Mike Leigh. But Looney gives the new couple such awful speeches and such fleeting appearances that it is quickly clear that the play is not about them at all. Rather, the core conflict is to be found between O'Kane and McLynn: this story from O'Kane's past has been a secret; McLynn is demoralised that her one ally in desperate housewifery has in fact had a "glamorous" past all along.

Crucially, some of the jokes are very funny, barbed and witty, and many of the rest are at least good one-liners. But a good measure of them are flat, and some utterly incidental – which the play can little afford, as it is already overlong.

And some, also, went over my head. Unlike many in the audience, I am neither a mother nor likely ever to be one; some of these jokes and observations just aren't meant for me.

That's fine, and it's fine too that this is a play which should be peopled with men but isn't, and where the one male role is so badly written that it would be unfair to criticise Keith Duffy for his acting. Men have ever written plays that do just that to women.

The real problem is twofold. The play is slight, in need of a drastic editing. And the production of it is flat as Keith Duffy's delivery.

This is Fiona Looney's first stage play. She is naturally funny, both in print and on telly, is an easy writer, and has cleverly exploited her family background to make for entertaining and insightful journalism. She has tried to convert this into a drama, with a poorly-developed "dramatic" premise, and has come up a bit short.

The weakness in the production is more difficult to attribute. It is directed by Michael Caven, an incisive and adept director. Dandelions, though, bears little evidence of that: it largely appears to be directing by numbers.

A beautifully realised set by Joe Vanek hampers the production badly – 90 per cent of the action takes place in the kitchen, so the presence of an elaborate garden and upstairs which are barely used makes the play appear static. Stage assistants stroll on after scenes for laborious changes of only the minutae of the set, slowing the pace for little scenic effect. And the acting is generally poor. Dawn Bradfield and Keith Duffy bring nothing to their roles as the neighbouring couple, though they are hampered by the kitch confessional quality of the writing in their scenes. O'Kane seems uncomfortable as McLynn's straight woman, though she shines in the edgier scenes. Pauline McLynn is both the best and worst thing in the play: she is the comic hit of the play, but for that sacrifices all sense of interaction with her straight-woman, O'Kane.

Dandelions looks likely to be a huge hit, and will give a lot of people a lot of laughs, particularly those who think mothers and housewives have been poorly served on the stage, and in comedy, and look forward to seeing how Looney redresses that. In individual moments of humour, and very occasionally of pathos, she is very successful. But that doesn't quite add up to a good play.

More: Dandelions runs at the Olympia Theatre until 19 November, 8pm. Booking through the Olympia Box Office, 01 6793323 or through www.ticketmaster.ie. €25