Theatre: First Draft

The last-minute replacement of an actor in Pyrenees provides Colin Murphy with a unique opportunity to watch the dramatic process

Pyrenees. Project Arts Centre, East Essex St, Dublin 2. www.project.ie. Until 9 September

The woman fumbles nervously with a dictaphone, mumbling excuses. She explains herself, apologises, apologises for apologising. Across the table, the man is patient, remote, waiting to be interviewed. The woman is earnest, neurotic, unintentionally funny, vulnerable, sincere. She shuffles the papers in her file, touches her hair, shifts awkwardly in her seat, tries – in vain – to compose herself.

Playing the woman, one of the key roles in David Greig's Pyrenees, Karen Ardiff hits a nerve of authenticity. This is surprising, because Ardiff has had just a day to rehearse the part. This is the opening night of Pyrenees and the cast and director have spent the previous day-and-a-half in manic rehearsals after illness forced an actor to drop out and Ardiff was recruited in her place. The papers she shuffles on the table in front of her are in fact her script – we catch a glimpse later of a page with green highlighter through her lines.

The first half takes place entirely at this table. When she has to walk around the set in the second, Ardiff carries the script with her, glancing at it just occasionally, and so we can't escape knowing that she's just been drafted in. This makes it impossible, and not just unfair, to truly judge either the play or the production. Annabelle Comyn and her cast will have laboured over David Greig's script for weeks, exploring nuance, experimenting with tone, and any subtleties so uncovered will have had to be abandoned in the effort to simply get the show on. But this problem is also an opportunity: what we get instead of a polished production is a privileged insight into the dramatic process.

Imagine being in that cast. Weeks of rehearsal, and the confidence that ensues, forsaken. Going on stage for the opening night not knowing if the character opposite you will look at you when saying her lines or be reading from a script – or be losing her place in the script. Not knowing whether the scene that you've rehearsed at a frantic emotional pitch will instead be played slowly and downbeat. Thinking you might have to improvise lines to cover awkward pauses or steer a scene back on track. And trying to do all this "in character".

The cast are searching, improvising, experimenting. Ardiff is creating her character as she goes. We are in effect watching a rehearsal – or, alternatively, we are watching an extraordinary audition by Ardiff, one in which she is supposed to be reading the script but manages to transcend it. (Think of the audition scene in David Lynch's film, Mulholland Drive.)

What the production lacks in polish it makes up for in creative – nervous – energy. The distinguishing feature of theatre as a dramatic art form is that it is live, yet often productions can seem hewn from stone, as if barely a facial twitch changes from night to night.

Tonight is not just live, but we are watching a cast do something normally only done in rehearsals: take risks. They rise to the challenge with aplomb, Mark Lambert in particular working with Karen Ardiff to bring to life a compelling emotional drama.

David Greig's play is the story of a man, apparently English, who loses his memory in an accident in the Pyrenees. Ardiff is the British consul who comes to interview him at a mountain-top hotel (beautifully conveyed in Paul O'Mahoney's set, lit by Sinead Wallace). It is a compelling, if curious, play which asks provocative, existential questions about identity and fulfilment but doesn't complement these with a rigorously coherent narrative.

Disclosure: Colin Murphy recently worked with director Annabelle Comyn as part of the Fishamble production of Whereabouts