Writer: Eva O’Connor
Director: Rex Ryan
Rex Ryan directs Eva O’Connor’s triumphant new play, The Kerryman, in the Glass Mask Theatre. The play dives into love in the big smoke; laugh-out-loud funny throughout and at times moving, The Kerryman is an excellent 70 minutes of theatre.
Cait (Lauren Larkin) is a sometimes-barista and sometimes-artist recently returned to Dublin from Berlin, determined to make something of herself and prove to the world, and her mother, that she is not a failure. Eoin (Sean Fox) works in finance, and dreams of returning to Kerry and taking on his family farm. The two couldn’t be more opposite, and yet, they find themselves being drawn to one another by an unexplainable force. This romance looks at the different Irelands that exist today, and particularly a woman’s place in today’s society. Living in Dublin city, a hub of feminism and finance and insurance sales and flat whites and scandalously nude Irish dancing, or moving to the country to live on the land, tending cattle and rearing a football team’s worth of kids.
The Kerryman does an excellent job of putting the audience in the scene: Cait and Eoin are in their thirties, Cait is still a struggling artist, Eoin is climbing steadily higher and higher up the corporate ladder. In the background, everyone they have ever met is getting married, sparking the flames of existential dread for them both. A Normal People for the stage, without all the insufferable tedium of Trinners debating societies.
The play follows the tried and tested Nora Ephronesque rom-com plotline: a couple meet, don’t like each other, fall head over heels, have an argument, and get back together again (or do they?). It’s not hugely original, but neither was When Harry Met Sally, and that did alright.
The theatre is quite hot and stuffy, although the heat wave is not the fault of the actors, and once the play starts that is all forgotten. The shoulder-to-shoulder nature of the theatre feels chic more than uncomfortable. Think Paris café culture.
Both actors deliver perfect chemistry and comic timing. The contrast between Larkin and Fox is fantastic, and works very well throughout, giving us two sides of the same story, like a comedic version of Friel’s Faith Healer. Fox’s deadpan humour is hysterical.
The simple costumes are great, and would explain to an outsider immediately the gargantuan difference between a farm boy from Kerry and a young woman from the Northside. The two bounce off each other like they really are combustible lovers.
The curtain falls to The Power of Love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and is met with thunderous applause. Fantastic.
Runs Until 13 June 2026.
