The Gate Theatre, Dublin

How should a memory play such as Dabe treated? With the loose rough and tumble of unbidden nostalgia, or with eidetic recall? Written in 1973, set in 1968, but summoning events from as far back as the 1940s, Hugh Leonard's drama suggests that the past floods our present no matter how we try to escape it. But rather than the fading pictures in Friel, the details of this nakedly autobiographical work burn bright and vivid, summoned by the playwright's pen. His alter-ego may seem overwhelmed but, in its contented artificiality, the past is at Leonard's command.

The Gate's handsome new production of Da, its first professional revival since Leonard's death in 2009, pays its respects to the play without unearthing anything surprising. Director Toby Frow and designer Ben Stones instead seem dutiful: the south Dublin council house to which the playwright Charlie returns is rendered persuasively, right down to its nicotine-yellow kitchen tiles; the porous stage boundaries are faithfully retained; and the casting of Gate regulars is impeccable. As the acerbic playwright, Stuart Graham has come to bury his father, not to praise him, but Owen Roe as Da treads with remarkable care between a character and caricature.

That’s no small achievement, as the play could tip either way; Da’s agonised handling of a hot teapot or his game-changing intrusion in a seduction scene are often played for easy laughs. Frow is admirably restrained and Roe – warm and artless – is all the better for it, while Graham contends with the not-inconsiderable task of making Charlie’s lines speakable: “Old faces,” he says by way of greeting. “They’ve turned up like bills you thought you’d never have to pay.” In the play’s most enjoyably narcissistic conceit, he has a standing order with his younger self (a dependably zingy Tadhg Murphy) who regards him with equal disdain and, it seems, an adolescent resentment that Charlie has not outgrown: “The shame of being ashamed of them was the worst part”.

Leonard gives ample reason for formative embarrassment – Da’s witless endorsement of Hitler, his mother’s self-aggrandising fixation with his adoption, the ingrained servility of both – and it explains why his arrogant, begrudging self-portrait is so unflattering.

An excellent Ingrid Craigie finds real steel in Mother, both sympathetic and complicated, while Roe, who never condescends to his character, reminds you that for all his obliviousness and sentimentality, Da is the most honest character onstage.

The runner-up is the severe civil servant Drumm, a part that John Kavanagh has played several times (between two plays), as though he holds exclusive rights to Leonard's best lines. Like so much of this production, Kavanagh's presence is solid, graceful and reassuring, but hardly inspired, and it enforces the suspicion that this effort is to preserve Darather than reconsider it. Fair enough, but is that really how Leonard would want it to be remembered?

Runs until Mar 31