Wife to James Whelan

Teresa Deevy had six plays performed at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in the 1930s. But in 1937 'Wife to James Whelan' was rejected and she parted company with the theatre. Now receiving its UK premiere courtesy of Irish-run company Charm Offensive, this is an at times exquisitely rueful study of the traps ambition can make for itself in a wonky world where the men must all be after the jobs and the women after the men. The first act takes place in a small Irish town on the evening young James Whelan (Mark Hesketh) leaves his friends to make his fortune in Dublin. We join him seven years later, where his boyish drive has hardened but the priggish affectation of an outer office can't stop his past from piling through the door. For all the finely acted comic bustle and emotional altercations, you feel the bus really left back on that spring evening.