Cyprus Avenue

Eric Miller, our protagonist, is an elderly Belfast loyalist. Playwright David Ireland pairs him with a most astonishing and disarming premise: he believes that his five-week-old granddaughter is famous Irish republican Gerry Adams. Though Adams is famously bearded and the baby girl is suitably clean shaven, Eric won’t hear a word to the contrary. He is convinced that the enemy has invaded his home. The consequences are unhinged and catastrophic.

Ireland’s play is ambitious and director Anna Houston executed it with confidence. We live in a time where political enemies abound. Technology, especially the internet, has decentralised our communities, split them from the spatial boundaries that used to protect. While a postcode may traditionally have been a clear indicator for political alignments and religious identity, now our neighbour or our granddaughter may well be the enemy.

To play Eric Miller asked a great deal, and Roy Barker delivered consistently. A staunch protestant unionist struggling with his own identity and the shifting world where "chaos is majesty" is an emotionally laboured role, and Barker kept the audience on the edges of their seats. Miller’s wife, Bernie, was played by Jude Gibson. Her performance had the pathos of an experienced older woman with great love and understanding. Amanda McGregor as Julie, the daughter, really shined at moments of hysteria and warranted paranoia about her father’s strange relationship with her newborn girl. Lloyd Allison-Young as a trigger-happy young unionist injected fabulous life and drama, showing successfully a balance of insanity-fuelled passion and recognition of what’s real and what’s not. 

The favourite performance must go to Branden Christine as Bridget, Eric’s clinical psychologist, and (much to his surprise and unconcealed chagrin) "a young black woman". Christine navigated the waters of conservative racism and sexism with a subtle and strong performance of professional humility. It was in these conversations that quiet tension was most provoked, and that the politics of ageing conservatives was seen for what it can be: a radical threat to the fabric of contemporary society.