Good Evening Mr Collins, The Mill Theatre

The opening line is an interesting one. De Valera pulls back a curtain, and it is obvious straight away that it is De Valera, and delivers the line: 'The will of the majority will be ignored. Ponder that.' It might be quite relevant for today. Opposite on the largest of the red levels, a woman enters, smoking a cigarette through a long holder, the silhouette looking more Coward and Private Lives than revolutionary Dublin. And so it starts, in the house of Moya Llewelyn Davies (Claire O'Donovan), with echoes of Claire Underwood throughout, although nowhere near as devious. Michael Collins arrives, she being one of the three women he liaises with in this revival of Tom MacIntyre's 1995 play, marking the tenth anniversary of the Mill Theatre itself.

There is a seriousness in the music that does set the tone throughout, and even when it moves to 'The Lambeth Walk' it can't seem to rescue the tone, leaving De Valera to set most of the humour within this production, a scene stealing, and inspired, performance from Matthew O'Brien, perfectly cast as Dev, delivering colour and tone to the character, from that first opening line right through, even during some Kung Fu style jumps, as well as playing the piano live and his hands and keys in full view of the audience (that received a round of applause in its own right), despite the more modern looking shoes, which is a pity as Sinead Roberts' costumes tend to be simple yet in keeping well with the times. In fact Dev pulls off a number of looks, the priestly cassock being an interesting one considering the relationship he had with the Church. 

Dev is presented as an onlooker, at one stage drinking a bottle of milk and making comments, as opposed to Collins more involvement in the grit and reality of daily activities. Dev is the repressed man, while Collins is more of the lad, seeing him with Kitty Kiernan (Aoibhinn Finnegan) and Hazel Lavery (Sharon McCoy), and suggesting that maybe history has not got his true affections in the right place. Darren Killeen's Collins comes over better in the lighter moments, rather than in times of aggression or a face off here and there. As the end is in sight, the torment of a man 'building a nation' is on view, a nation, he says, that is full of corpses. 

Collins relationships with the three women are presented as different, one a confident, one a girlfriend and one that consumes him, as sex comes to the fore, that even Dev notices, something not really thought of when looking at these historical characters. Others get a look in, GB Shaw (Tom Ronayane), because it is a period piece, so why not is his reason (it is GBS after all, would he really have needed a reason?), and of course Arthur Griffith, who through Paul Sharpe, delivers a most natural and touching moment in the play, when he tells us how from Government Buildings he cursed Dev.

While the red and black set from Michael A Doyle is striking, the production itself, directed by Padraic McIntyre, seems to meander along for the first act, letting me hope that the colourful, devious Dev might be simply left on to add lightness. The tone is more serious than light, but then it may be argued that comedy is a serious thing. In this case, maybe too serious. There may be some spirit in the play, but unfortunately it doesn't come over that way, at times some lines could have been projected more as well, signalling the end a lot earlier than before its actual arrival.