THE CIVILISATION GAME:Lyric Theatre, Belfast Until May 26 7.45pm (Sat Sun mat 2.30pm) £22.50/£20 lyrictheatre.co.uk

In 2002, Tim Loane wrote a wicked send-up of Unionist political fears (Caught Red Handed), then followed it up in 2007 with a scabrous lampoon of post-ceasefire Republicanism (To Be Sure). Archly, pointedly and bravely, he named the pair “Comedy of Terrors”. Here was a satirist using the mechanics of farce – its speed, its characters’ pathetically exposed hypocrisies, the embarrassment of being caught with your pants down – to ridicule the apparently intractable state of Ulster’s politics.

Five years later, both sectarianism and authority are conspicuous by their absence

in The Civilisation Game. Instead, Loane targets the middle classes, the insincere hand-wringers who bemoan the plight of the working class while simultaneously perpetuating it.

A young Belfast couple apprehend a teenage hoodlum who breaks into their new home, and – with the help of their overbearing neighbours – begin to interrogate him. Steadily, however (which is to say, schematically), the intruder reveals uncomfortable truths about each of them.

Loane’s production for the Lyric is bright and brash, but middle-class morality is hardly new fodder for farce, and here offers only slim pickings for such a big-game hunter. Cathy White, as a simpering tyrant, excels among standard palaver. But while Loane’s social criticism is pungent, you’re left with the suspicion that a satirist who once changed the game is this time just playing it.

can’T see ThaT? caTch This

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