Alex Johnston's first play, Melonfarmer, was bursting with promise and effective comedic writing, imbued with dramatic satisfaction and an underlying deep seriousness. His second, which opened a three-week run in Dublin last night following runs in Australia and at the Bush Theatre in London, is similarly promising and imbued. Better constructed than the first, it relies on a similar construct in which characters appear to distance themselves from their actions by the words they utter.

This time it is about the post-graduate on the dole (Keith) who gives forth verbally about gender reorientation in society and other irrelevant subjects while lusting after his loved Fionnuala, and the part-time electrician Jaco, who gives forth about his lusts while not wholly committing himself to relationships, who shares a grungy flat with Keith. The pair sit in front of a silent TV set because they have no remote control to adjust the sound and no desire to leave their collapsing chairs to turn up the volume manually: inertia personified, even when it turns out that their targets in love both turn out to be Fionnuala in person (although she appears on stage only in their dislocated conversations).

It starts with an hilarious sequence of conjoined monologues - Keith about gender etc., and Jaco about explicit sexual desires - and their conversation continues to be punctuated by individual monologues addressed directly to their audience. That they finally fall out is inevitable, but their progress towards their mutual estrangement is always tangential rather than direct. The author plays Keith with almost icy disengagement and Patrick Leech plays Jaco with lusty lethargy. The effective direction is by Jimmy Fay for Bedrock Theatre. Alex Johnston retains his rich promise and could well fulfil it wholly with his next work.

Runs at Project until May 2nd. Booking 1850 260027.