Set on a small piece of overgrown field approximately the size of a large briefcase, two men stood, pirched, and spat their way through a witty and original take on the "say nothing" culture of modern Northern Ireland.

Before an audience of no more than 30 people in the Clocktower, Croydon, David Woods and John Hough, the co-writers and performers, used a scarse set and a bare plot to produce an accurate microcosm of the lingual apathy prevalent in the country.

The two men, who based the show on their own experiences, captivated the audience through seamless and often surreal transitions from one character to another, from conversation to narrative, and from plot to stream-of-consciousness.

Not full to the brim with gags, the play was neither flinching nor overly pretentious, and was witty, insightful, surreal and occasionally bril-liant.

In a similar way to soap operas, which interweave finite chains of plot to produce an endless story, "Say Nothing" inter-weaves the conversa-tions of a naively ardent "peace and conflict" graduate as he endeavours to solve some deep-rooted problems.

As wholes and parts of former conversations are reiterated, restated and rehashed, you are not always sure if something has happened or if nothing has happened, and you feel both led on a tangent and taken full circle.

And beneath the irrelevant, hilarious utterances of the Anglophillic landlady for instance, an ugly, brutal truth is often hinted at, but never explained. Our naive protagonist is eventually frustrated and beaten down by hostility, deflection and incomprehensibility.

Ultimately, the play seems to relate this to the peace process as a whole and the audience is left in no doubt to what it means a pair of smouldering shoes, with the two actors gone.

December 13, 2001 16:30