This gentle comedy is set in Buncrana, County Donegal, just across the border from Northern Ireland, between 1943 and 1945, the last two years of what the Irish called The Emergency. Ireland is a neutral country and yet its army is on full alert, for there is a deep-rooted fear of possible invasion by the British.
An invasion does take place into the home and kitchen of Dolly West (a subtle, unshowy performance from Mary Ryan) and her family, although not in the military sense. Her ex lover Alec (an Englishman working for American intelligence) and two American soldiers, Marco and Jamie, are brought home by Dollys mother, Rima West (Anne Vaughn). The cat is well and truly amongst the pigeons as the lives of this close family are changed forever.
Theres much to enjoy in the writing and the playing. Tara Kerins is particularly good as the younger sister Esther and Anna Owens is excellent as the familys young maid whos determined to get her man. Frank McGuiness uses what is on one level a very parochial story to subtly examine wider issues, not only the oppression of Ireland by the British, but Irelands failure, as a neutral country used to such oppression, to throw its arms open to the Jews.
The characters are surprising and original for a play set in rural Ireland in the forties. Dolly herself had spent time studying in Italy, and Marco is a flamboyantly gay GI who really shakes up one of the other characters.
My major criticism is that some of the actors are obviously too old for the parts they are playing. Also director Seamus Thackerberrys staging is slightly unimaginative (I just hate it when lots of characters sit round one side of a dinner table as if theyre in Da Vicncis last Supper) and some of the performances are less good than others. But this is a play to see if only for the unusual insights it gives into a period of history you think you know all about. Irelands neutrality was more complicated than I had realised, and was hardly based on a love of pacifism. As one of the characters says: Weve a genius for war, but only confined to our own.
