The hapless McRae brothers, Archie (Tommy Tiernan) and Bopper (Aaron Monaghan), are the kind of comically shifty characters who might have made a four-line appearance in one of Kevin Barry’s novels. In the acclaimed author’s new play they have central roles, in a remote Sligo setting where they are sleeping rough in eerie caves on the outskirts of a town. Homeless and unwelcome in the area, these two have hit middle age and are lost, in ways they can’t acknowledge.
Frustrated with each other, yet unable to separate or to leave, even when threatened with arrest, the brothers’ mutually dependent predicament has echoes of Beckett and Enda Walsh. Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West hovers in the background too – although Barry’s take on rural dysfunction contains less violence and a lot more depression.
