Theatre: To hell and back

At the opening night of The Flags, everyone is laughing at the gags besides
Colin Murphy, who rathers the masks and mimes of Familie Flöz's Teatro Delusio

The Flags. By Bridget O'Connor. Andrew's Lane Theatre, Dublin 2. www.andrewslane.com Until 28 October

Teatro Delusio. By Familie Flöz. Fringe run at Pavilion Theatre now finished

For Sartre, hell was other people. For the theatre critic, hell is other people laughing when you're not. Such is the plight I found myself in at the preview of The Flags (by special permission; it opened the night we went to print). The audience roared. People shook with laughter. Hooted. At the end, they stomped their feet. I tried not to anticipate how long was left by looking at my phone.

The Flags is impeccably staged, on a set designed with some flair by Laurie Dennett. It is well acted, and one of the performances, Jamie Beamish as Howie, is a real treat. The dialogue is well written, as far as credible banter goes, and the play is laced with scenes that are individually effective as comic sketches.

But it is an awful play. It is set on a decrepit and deserted Irish beach, which is lovingly recreated on a stage replete with dirty sand, half a car wreck and a weather-beaten lifeguard's hut. But it doesn't change. They don't go anywhere else, and even the light barely changes. The set quickly becomes tiresome.

On this beach are two dysfunctional lifeguards, basically Father Ted and Dougal. The way Father Ted (as with most comedy series) works is that, in each episode, the core comic characters are given slightly absurd challenges to overcome. The characters are basically funny and what they have to do is itself funny. In The Flags, the characters are vaguely funny (Jamie Beamish adds a whole layer of humour through his clowning around) and they have feck all to do.

Author Bridget O'Connor makes heavy work of interweaving in two over-extended plotlines. In one, a past fling of one of the lads returns to the beach to drown herself. In the other, a local councillor is running a competition to recruit lifeguards for a nearby luxury beach. The action is too absurd to evoke empathy for the characters and too bland to be funny for its absurdity. There are moments that work – moments that would make great sketches, or great scenes in a comedy series. But the narrative drive to knit them together is missing – instead the play relies on the laughs provoked by combining "feck", "dude" and "cunt" in the same sentence.

The Guardian gave this four stars and said: "Bridget O'Connor's comedy is as sharp and gritty as the authentic Galway sand covering the floor." You can't trust British critics on Irish plays.

I may be similarly ignorant of continental physical theatre, but I don't care. A couple of masks and a bit of mime do it for me, and German company Familie Flöz's Teatro Delusio – which had a shamefully short run at the end of the Fringe festival – was a masterclass. We were backstage at a great theatre, in the presence of three Marx Brothers-like stage technicians. Actors, directors, even a ghost, wandered in (all played by the three actors, changing masks and costumes). There was no overt plot, not a word was spoken. But it was beautiful, it was inspiring and it was very funny. Trust me.