THEATRE REVIEW: Ulster American

An American Oscar-winning actor, with Irish roots, is in London to star in a new play about ‘the troubles’. He meets with the English director and easily intimidates him. They have a laddish conversation about who they would rape if a gun was pointed at their heads. Enter the female writer from Northern Ireland.

The playwright and the director are ambitious and want some of the American actor’s status to rub off on them. But there’s a misunderstanding about the politics of the play, and the actor soon takes offence. The play isn’t, as the star assumed, a pro-IRA play but is instead about a violent Ulster Unionist.

A big fight ensues with both the playwright and the actor having it out, and the director, watching his dream career go down the pan, intervenes to placate them. The playwright deconstructs many assumptions people have about Ireland and what happened, and she outrights states how rich Americans with Irish roots (like the actor) used to fund terrorism in Ireland.

After much arguing between all three of them about national identity and feminism, the director discovers that the playwright is a conservative and supports Brexit. He loses it with her, but she puts him in his place saying that just because ‘the arts’ indulge in political groupthink doesn’t mean she will. He tells her she will be ruined in theatre if she has independent political opinions.

This is a dark smart comedy which sends up virtue signalling and satirises men professing feminism. It was interesting and amusing to see the one-sided love affair between Northern Irish protestants and Britain mentioned several times on stage – the playwright insists she is British and proud and the director (an Englishman) keeps calling her Irish.

I didn’t love the ending myself, although it was well executed, and works as a metaphor of how terrible violence can erupt from small differences.