Sive

Olympia Theatre, Dublin until 26 October. Dublin Theatre Festival.

In 1959, with his first and arguably best play, John B Keane announced himself to Kerry, Ireland and the world as a major new voice in the realm of theatre. That 'Sive' was initially rejected by Dublin's Abbey Theatre has only added to the legend surrounding the play, an anecdote recounted to each subsequent theatre-inclined generation and greeted with predictable incredulity and mockery.

The story is well known. Sive, a young and beautiful orphan who lives with her uncle Mike and his angry, bitter and childless wife Mena, becomes the object of a potential match with an ageing but rich farmer, Seán Dota. It's an arrangement which is every bit as disturbing as it sounds, especially since Dota is more suited to the coffin than the carnal cot.

Facilitating the proposed marriage is local matchmaker, the shifty, snivelling Thomasheen Seán Rua. Initially dismissing the notion as an aberration against nature, Mike is soon persuaded to take part in the Machiavellian machinations of Rua, prompted at every twist and turn by the Lady Macbeth-ish Mena. Sive, along with her adoring and disgusted grandmother, is brow-beaten along the perverse path, with predictably tragic results.

'Sive' is a play about contrasts: young and old, wealth and poverty and, perhaps most crucial of all, good and evil. The play is also a disturbing reminder of Ireland's murkier traditional codes. And although the plot is driven by rustic rites which are totally alien to modern audiences, the bigger dynamics of the piece are universal.

These dynamics - sex and money - are etched in veiled and not so veiled references throughout the play. Both are instruments of power, the trick being how to wield them. The promise of pleasure is the stranglehold which prompts the lecherous, leering Dota to part with his money; Mena uses this very same pleasure to tap into Mike's venality; while the promise of silver is the poison which pollutes Mena and the detestable Rua. In a cruel irony, the beautiful Sive is too young and vulnerable to use her natural endowments to effect any positive outcome.

Set and lit in harsh and dirty grey tones, 'Sive' features an ensemble of reliable performances, although it must be noted that the accents are erratic at the best of times. Ruth Bradley is suitably striking in the titular role, Derbhle Crotty gives a spirited turn as the malignant Mena, while Anna Manahan is her usual dependable self as Sive's grandmother. Eamonn Morrissey's Thomasheen Seán Rua is probably the most memorable performance, notwithstanding the fact that it's hardly a stretch for an actor who has played his fair share of gombeen men.

Druid's production is effortlessly solid and entertaining, but after the curtain falls one can't help feeling surprisingly uninspired by the whole thing. And with an ending that reeks of melodrama and an alienating sense of its own self-importance, we are left longing for a much-needed degree of subtlety. A crucial fault in an otherwise fine production.

Tom Grealis