A leaky river barge, a two-week cruise and the tail end of a hurricane is the backdrop to Niall Moore's new play set on the fault-line between youth and middle age. Gerry is the captain of this doomed voyage, desperate to be viewed as a magnanimous host by his unfeeling friends.
Mary, his long-suffering wife, is looking for escape from a loveless union and to restart her life by rekindling her affair with Eamonn, the husband of her best friend. He, on the other hand is reluctant to rock the boat (as it were) and prefers to wait and resume their affair on dry land.
Director Joan McGarry keeps the action moving at a lively pace allowing Moore's entertaining script to breathe life into his characters. Sharp one-liners make John Butler, as the incapable and untimely cuckold Gerry, the fulcrum for the play's tragi-comic pathos but he never allows himself to be capsized by mawkish sentimentality. In this, he is matched by Mary O'Sullivan, whose facade as the hardboiled, gin-swigging Ann only cracks at the final moment.
If I have one minor quibble with this play, it is that Derry and Ann as the minor characters seem sketchily drawn and spend long tracts of the evening wondering whether they belong on or off the stage.
Apart from this, Adrift is a fine night's entertainment.
Runs tonight at the Belltable, Limerick, then tours to St John's Arts Centre, Listowel (Monday and Tuesday), Garter Lane, Waterford (Thursday and Friday), Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny (July 29th-31st), Everyman Palace, Cork (August 3rd-5th).