Stella Feehily’s punchy first play is a study in female resilience. It shows young, drunk, scantily-clad Irish women coming up tough and smiling, as if shrugging off a hangover, from all sorts of disadvantages and abuse. Sure, it’s a bit schematic, but Feehily’s writing has a zest and swagger — well-served by Max Stafford-Clark’s pacy production — that carries it through.
Feehily’s heroine, played with a delightfully artless mixture of innocence and impudent lasciviousness by Ruth Negga, is a child of the modern, notsofair city of Dublin. She’s a staggeringly pretty club hostess who is also pretty staggeringly drunk when we first see her. She is called Cat, but nicknamed Duck by her drug-dealing boyfriend, Mark, on account of her big feet.
In revenge for his brutishness, she torches his beloved Jeep and takes up with a writer — Irish cliché alert! — who is old enough to be her father. Alas, he also treats her as a blank slate to be renamed and scribbled on.
Meanwhile, Cat’s college-going friend, Sophie, is fighting off would-be rapists of an evening, then facing her abusive mum in the morning. In her bid to show that life in modern, Euro-friendly Dublin is still tough, Feehily chucks in references to everything from paedophile priests to terrorism. She even lets a cloud of incest pass over the stage, before letting it evaporate.
Even when she is steering close to bathos, though, Feehily’s writing is dextrous and charming. “Fecund,” says Tony Rohr as the goatish old writer, as he cups Cat’s buttock. “Feck what?” she replies. Duck is never less than very good fun. It is directed with economy by Max Stafford-Clark. Negga shines at the head of a winning cast. The play also contains one of the wittiest, sexiest, scariest bathtub scenes I’ve ever seen on stage. With luck, it won’t be the best thing Stella Feehily ever writes.
Until 10 January. Information: 020 7565 5000.
