Theatre

What the Animals Say

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

four stars

You can take the boy out of Belfast but, for sure, you’d be hard-pressed to take the conflicted issues of Belfast out of the boy. Former school-mates, Eddie (Jordan Young) and Jimmy (Kevin Lennon), have followed their career dreams – well, as far as Glasgow. Footballer Eddie now captains Celtic – he’s actually Protestant, and is going through all kinds of hoops, not just wearing them – while unemployed actor Jimmy is still chasing that big, break-through role.

In David Ireland’s two-hander, What the Animals Say – his first play, it premiered here in 2009 – the two men bump into each other in the Stranraer terminal of the Northern Ireland ferry. Jimmy wants to focus on his forthcoming audition: if he gets this part in Mel Gibson’s new film, it could be life-changing. Eddie’s life has already changed: he’s a top player, on first name terms with celebs off the pitch – however as he chivvies Jimmy into conversation it’s clear that Eddie’s brains are in his boots, not his head.

Some of his gaffes are down to happy-go-lucky ignorance but as Ireland’s sharp-toothed, rapid-fire dialogue soon reveals, Eddie is racist, sectarian, bullish and reckons actors are all gay. Jimmy has no truck with any of this. They part. That’s that, you think. But in a (slightly improbable) twist, they meet again in Eddie’s dressing room...he’s acting (!) in Gibson’s film about The Troubles and Jimmy is understandably aggrieved.

This second part edges the tensions into darker, more aggressive confrontations that come to a halt in a less than believable way. By then, however, Ireland’s script, with its updated tweaks, has been given a cracking revival by Young, Lennon and director Sally Reid. Young and Lennon give the disappointed, damaged truths of their contrasting characters a flesh-and-blood vitality that pulls you right into what drives them...and how the nature and nurture of Belfast still shapes them.