Ulster American review: Matthew Broderick lends star power to bitingly funny satire
Matthew Broderick in Ulster American at the Abbey Theatre. Picture: Carol Rosegg
★★★☆☆
“Life moves pretty fast,” as Ferris Bueller had it. And sure enough, there’s the man who played the fresh-faced truant, Matthew Broderick, onstage at the Abbey Theatre. Now an ageing Irish American actor, he’s playing Jay Conway, an ageing Irish American actor, in David Ireland’s pleasingly outrageous satire.
But if life moves fast, it’s nothing compared to our constantly shifting social media-driven culture. was on the Abbey stage a hot minute ago (OK, seven years, but that’s nothing, right?) but it already feels like a piece from a very strange, distant era.
Indeed, this curious time-capsule quality is perhaps the most interesting thing about seeing it a second time. The plot, such as it is, hinges on using Twitter to expose someone’s misogyny. Oh man. After years of wearisome, puritanical internet pile-ons, such a twist seems oddly quaint. We’re more sceptical now. Sure, there are some sticking-plaster updates, like when Jay mentions it’s called X now. But what seemed plausible back in 2018 – Twitter as some platform for moral reckoning – seems almost absurd today. And as for Brexit? While it hasn’t gone away, its place as an all-consuming cultural faultline has waned.
That said, in its current iteration, from New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre, remains a bitingly funny 90 minutes, poking fun at liberal hypocrisy and cultural misunderstandings.
We find Broderick’s air-headed ignoramus Jay at the London home of theatre director Lee Carver (it was Leigh Carver last time, but no matter). He’s played with convincing bluster and bluff by Max Baker. It’s the eve of rehearsals for a new play by the Irish(ish) writer Ruth Davenport.
“Is it ever OK to rape someone?” asks Jay. It’s quite a question, coming as it does after his hilariously unself-aware monologue ticking off all his right-on credentials. We’ve already had the N-word, Ice Cube and James Baldwin (mistaken for one of the acting clan).
Davenport’s arrival sets off more audaciously un-PC comedy. Unhelpfully, she thinks of herself as British. Worse, she’s even a Tory. And her “Irish” play is about a psychopathic UVF man who likes to spend his time decapitating priests. All this is news to Jay, who hasn’t quite grasped the politics. (He needs a bit of schooling on what Ulster is, or what Fenians are.) And it’s a nuisance to Lee, who repeatedly reminds Davenport she’s not really British anyway.
Broderick plays Jay against type, as a quietly magnetic oddball. Geraldine Hughes gives a spirited, feisty performance as the misunderstood playwright with problematic views on terrorists and Paddies.
It’s a lot of fun, but it’s a shame it runs out of ideas, with poorly choreographed violence undoing some of director Ciaran O’Reilly’s good work. This might be a staging justified mostly by Broderick’s star power, but he does give a beguiling performance. If the play now creaks a little by virtue of once being so up to date, it’s nonetheless worth seeing.
