David Ireland on his shocking new play Cyprus Avenue, Tron Theatre

Had they been expecting something a little more Darby O’Gill? “Well, it was more like they love [Martin] McDonagh in New York,” he says, referring to the writer of In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin.

“Now, I love McDonagh,” adds Ireland over tea in Glasgow’s Tron bar. “But he plays on those old Irish stereotypes, writing about a previous generation. I was writing about now, contemporary Belfast in a way that wasn’t romantic or sentimental at all.”

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Didn’t the audience reaction cause him upset? “I like stuff that provokes and is shocking,” he says, with a wicked laugh. “So, I write for people like me, those likely to think, ‘I can’t believe he said that.’ Or, ‘Where is this going to go?’”

Cypress Avenue is a perfectly balanced play in that it provokes and shocks in fairly equal measure. It’s also exceptionally funny. At first. Set in middle-class Belfast, we enter the world and mind of Eric Miller, a Belfast Protestant who, while cuddling his granddaughter, sees the face, beard and glasses of Republican leader Gerry Adams.

Eric is clearly suffering from rampant paranoia, tormented by fear that the union between Ulster and Great Britain will collapse. The writer seizes upon this frailty to offer up the comedy of despair. And as Eric dissolves into madness, Ireland’s writing delves into the absurdist.

Without giving away plot detail, it’s fair to say David Ireland cleverly takes audiences on the theatrical equivalent of a fairground ride; you slowly, gradually, climb to greater and greater heights of joy and laughter – but then plunge 120m, splattered emotionally onto concrete. “I thought the play would be violent when I began writing it, but still funny,” he reflects, grinning. “But it got to the point where it just became horrific.”

David Hayman (Image: free)

There aren’t too many playwrights around who have managed to meld comedy and conflict as well as David Ireland. It’s not a surprise to learn he is influenced by his favourite writer, Neil Simon. Yet, David Ireland’s work draws far more heavily from personal experience, of growing up in working-class East Belfast, (“Two books on the shelf; the Bible and, I think, a Jackie Collins.”)

But what prompted the idea for Cyprus Avenue? “The play was originally commissioned by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, but I just didn’t feel any connection to Dublin. I had to ask myself, ‘What do they [the Abbey] want from me?’ I don’t see myself as an ‘Irish writer’. Am I benefitting from being seen as an Irish writer because there is some cultural cachet to that? I guess the play sort of started off with that question.”

At the time of writing the play, Ireland had been recently married (to Jen, a movement director and writer whom he met on stage in Glasgow) and the couple were talking about having children. This raised anxieties about what he would teach his children, about heritage. It gave the play a subtext without Ireland realising it.

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But why set the play in middle-class Cyprus Avenue? “This was the street I’d pass on the bus as a boy, with its beautiful houses, where Ian Paisley lived. And I felt I was now middle-class.” So, was this decision formed by guilt at having left his roots behind? “I don’t know if it was about guilt, maybe more about being middle-aged and the nostalgia I have for lots of stuff about my childhood and Loyalist working-class culture.”

Nostalgia? But you grew up in Belfast during the Troubles? “As a child, the UVF, were seen as heroes,” he says with a wry smile. “In films, the Loyalists are so often depicted as idiots and hooligans.The guys I knew were scary too, but they were also cool and dressed like De Niro and Pacino in Goodfellas. Part of me wanted to be like that – but part of me knew I was too soft.”

He smiles. “I could never have killed anyone. And while other kids were tossing stones across the barricades, I was at home writing poems.”

As a youngster, David Ireland attended cross-community youth groups. He loved the acting experience. He wondered if he could one day play out the Pacino roles.

Ireland followed the dream via Glasgow’s RSAMD (now the Conservatoire) in the late 1990s. The writing career came about by necessity rather than invention when, after graduating, Ireland realised directors weren’t desperate to cast him in the Pacino roles. Yes, he landed the lead role in Daniel Jackson’s 2014 theatre comedy-drama Kill Johnny Glendinning – and was excellent – but in TV series such as Still Game, Mountain Goats and more recently Derry Girls, he’s played supporting roles.

By contrast, his early plays, What The Animals Say and Everything Between Us (written in 2009 and drawing heavily on the Ulster Protestant experience), convinced the theatre world they had a major talent in their midst. Since then, his fingers have rarely stop tapping. He’s working on a new play for the National Theatre of Scotland, he’s completed a play for London’s Almeida Theatre. And there’s The Lovers, a TV romcom set to run on Sky Television, with a second series already commissioned. “I love romcoms,” he says.

Film offers have also come his way. But . . . “The problem I have with producers is they like you to be able to tell them how a story ends,” he says. “But I have no idea. I just start to write and then see where the characters take me. And very often I get a shock.”

As was certainly case with Cyprus Avenue. Yet, while there was American outrage, the play was a huge success in London. Dublin (delightfully) couldn’t make its mind up whether it was a Loyalist or Nationalist play. And productions in Australia went down a storm. But what of Glasgow? “I think Glasgow will be similar to Belfast whereby both cities can laugh at the dark stuff.”

He grins mischievously. “In Belfast, there was a lot of hysterical laughter, and then a feeling that something was about to explode. That’s what I’ll be hoping for here.”

Cyprus Avenue, The Tron Theatre, Glasgow, March 3-25.