‘The End of Hope’ begins, appropriately, with an end: the closing stages of coitus between two near-strangers who’ve met through a dating site and have known each other for the best part of 90 minutes. Only then do they get to know each other. Dermot (Rufus Wright) is a famous, atheistic poet who likes watching worthy documentaries and disapproves of Tony Blair. Janet (Elinor Lawless), by contrast, works in Tesco, drops the odd racist comment, thinks Tony Blair has nice hair – and, on God’s instructions, wears a mouse costume.
And so David Ireland’s two-hander gathers into a meditation on how attraction can supersede differences in class, religion and politics. As with the playwright’s previous works, the Troubles lend a backdrop: it's set in Belfast. But sectarianism, interestingly, is only part of it. That Janet hasn’t heard of Dermot because she doesn’t watch the highbrow TV channels he appears on seems to say far more about our times than the fact she’s Protestant and he’s Catholic-born.
Straightforwardly directed by Max Elton around the lone, rumpled bed, if this perambulates a bit over the course of an hour, it’s braced by sharp dialogue and two strong performances. (Lawless, in particular, brings fierceness to a role that could have got lost in Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory). And in the end, the play undermines its title; ultimately this isn’t about the importance, so much as the ongoing possibility of finding common ground in an identity-fixated age of bubbles, silos and dating-app profiles strewn with ‘no Tories’ disclaimers.