The Cave review – dark-humoured tale of brothers' emotional descent

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.
Here the pair's escapism comes in online form, through the stolen smartphones and laptops that are scattered around designer Joanna Parker's imposingly abstract, almost lunar landscape setting. As they grapple with parts of a broken-down van, tyres, ladders and junk, they desperately attempt to get an internet connection to check the latest updates from a Mexican actress with whom Bopper is obsessed to the point of losing grip on reality.
In Caitríona McLaughlin's production, the brothers' comic double-act is given full rein, with Monaghan bringing knockabout physical energy to the anguished Bopper, while Tiernan's background in standup comedy allows Archie to be a more deadpan foil. Stretched over 13 scenes, each announced with a surtitle – 'Scene 10, The Descent of Man' – the play at times seems like a series of gags, sketches and one-liners, treating the pair's physical and mental deterioration with a familiar black humour that lacks some emotional underpinning.
The local garda sergeant, Helen, whose connection to the pair is not immediately revealed, is an underwritten role, with which Judith Roddy does her wry best. It takes an explanatory epilogue from Helen to fill in some of the gaps. Her police statement adds a layer of reflective poignancy that earlier came only in snatches, as when Archie wonders about their cave-dwelling ancestors and they briefly contemplate 'the purpose of the brothers McRae'.
At Abbey theatre, Dublin, until 18 July; then at Town Hall theatre, Galway, 22-26 July

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