Bejasus, it's back. You'd be forgiven, though, for thinking Marie Jones's crowd-pleasing Irish two-hander had never gone away, seeing as it enjoyed a recent-ish fouryear stint in the West End. Yet what should have been a triumphant - not to mention lucrative - festive revival has been scuppered by illness, meaning that the production will close at the end of next week.
The "alternate cast" of John Cronin and Conrad Kemp is more than serviceable, yet an understandable air of deflation, of stones in pockets rather than walking on water, hangs over David Bownes's production.
It's vital that the two actors, athletically tackling 15 roles between them, command the stage space and make every inch of it come alive as a drama-packed film set in County Kerry. Cronin and Kemp work hard, but the unfurnished playing area seems to billow out dauntingly around them.
One wonders if Ricky Gervais nicked an idea or two from Jones, given that the extras are the ones who take centre stage here. Charlie and Jake, our narrators, are just two of a crowd of villagers who are paid a daily pittance to be "dispossessed peasants" in the background of a ghastly-sounding Hollywood schmaltzfest about love across the Irish class divide.
As well as these local likely lads, Cronin and Kemp have fun portraying, among others, the temperamental leading lady and, best of all, the hair-flicking production assistant Aisling, a master study of passive-aggressive ambition. But it's not all gentle jokes about flashy film folk, as Jones introduces a dark note, a slightly tacked-on feeling storyline about one young man's disastrous celluloid fantasies. When farms become the sets of films about farms, Jones warns, something has gone very wrong.
Until 2 December (0870 890 1103).
Stones In His Pockets
Duchess Theatre
Catherine Street, WC2B 5LA
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