In danger of being smothered by the Zeitgeist

Colin Murphy is nearly overwhelmed by new Irish plays after a trip to Dublin's Project for The Gist of It

The vogue for new plays is beginning to get out of hand. With Fishamble and Rough Magic both showcasing new Irish plays, and the Abbey newly reconverted to new Irish work, we're suddenly in danger of being smothered by the Zeitgeist.

A trip through the Abbey, Peacock and Project Arts Centre over recent weeks could have been a crash course in trendy post-milennial angst. While Hometown, The Grown-Ups and now The Gist of It are individually exciting as new work and have been given energetic productions, their determination to put the people of today's Dublin on stage quickly becomes tiresome and their earnest explorations of youth and contemporary culture, repetitive.

But this is harsh on Rodney Lee's play, The Gist of It, which is being staged as part of the Fishamble Firsts programme of debut plays. In the cosy space of the Cube theatre in Dublin's Project Arts Centre, this is explicitly something that neither of the national theatre's recent productions claimed to be: a studio production. The Gist of It is raw, awkward, muddled, occasionally very funny, and performed with panache; it's not a great play – though it is reasonably entertaining – but it is great that Fishamble are prepared to invest in this way in incubating writers.

Rodney Lee gives us a story about a couple of film students making an end-of-year short film. Amy Conroy is an aloof wannabe director trying to film a script that is painfully obscure; Paul Reid is a jock classmate who has agreed to help her with the film purely as part of a convoluted strategy for getting back with his girlfriend. They're shooting the film over an intense weekend in her family home, which she shares with just her father, Philip O'Sullivan, a grumpy academic.

In that, the play is basically a gentle satire on film students, and students generally: their conversation is laced with incessant references to movies, from the inane (him) to the obscure (her); her film is a parody of video art and the more obscure art-house cinema; and amidst it all they're making a shamble of their lives and growing up, all the while trying to work out how much they should be having of drink and sex, and with whom.

The plot, though, is more of a farce. In essence, it's about her father trying to stop them making the film. His chief strategy for this is distracting them and messing up the equipment while they're out of the room. Cue lengthy dialogues whose sole dramatic objective is not to convey information, but simply to drag out the time, and multiple entrances and exits contrived to allow objects be hidden, moved, found, etc.

Through it all, playwright Rodney Lee is gagging to see his characters grow up and embrace their potential: the emotional momentum of the play is that of a straight coming-of-age drama.

Woody Allen manages to combine satire, farce and straight drama in this way, chiefly because he works with brilliant actors and gives them scripts that may be heavy on satirical observation of contemporary culture, but are brilliantly and precisely observed.

Rodney Lee's script, however, is bogged down in its own archness. The single plot line – will they or won't they get the film made – is way too thin to sustain 90 minutes' drama, and as a result the plot is both overextended and ridiculously complicated. The dialogue is stuffed so full of knowing references, ironic jokes and witty back-answers as to defeat the naturalistic style of the production.

Director Jim Culleton's young cast, Amy Conroy and Paul Reid, lack the experience necessary for handling the strained dialogue; Philip O'Sullivan, however, shows what experience can make of even a weak script, giving a skilfully crafted and very funny performance as the eccentric (but very believable) professor father. Conroy and Reid are simply on stage too much, with too little of dramatic significance to say or do – despite this, they both give ballsy and earnest performances which, for those moments when the script exceeds itself, are true and compelling.

The play finally coalesces in one simple, cliched, but affectingly-performed moment towards the end, when Paul Reid finally realises what Amy Conroy's film is about, delivers a previously obscure monologue with true passion, and the hidden power of her script hits home with her father. Momentarily, the play soars. This, I suspect, is the nugget Jim Culleton and Fishamble's literary officer, Gavin Costick, saw in the play, and the reason they run Fishamble Firsts.

DETAILS

The Gist of It by Rodney Lee

At Project Cube, Dublin, until 11 March: (01) 8819613

At the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, 13-18 March: (01) 4627477