Don’t mention the war! Indeed, school books can afford only a few meagre paragraphs on Ireland’s euphemistically termed ‘Emergency’ and in John Montague’s words, this smidgen of Ireland’s past is ‘the drama of the non-event’.  So, nothing happened here between 1939 and 1945? Highly improbable.  So improbable in fact, that in this newly-cast revival of their hit musical ‘Improbable Frequency’, Rough Magic posits some possibly probable alternatives: extraordinary war-time conspiracies, deals and capers presented in a witty, irreverent and often barmy medium that deconstructs both Irish history and the Vaudeville tradition.

All’s fair in love and war: except, perhaps, when you are a love-struck English crossword fanatic inveigled into spying on Fenian rotters in the depths of Dublin during the Emergency. Cruciverbalist Tristram finds that ‘nothing is but what is not’ and for MI5’s latest recruit, Éire is a lusciously virgin territory where little is subject to rationing. There are radio broadcasts to decode, Smileyesque handlers to placate, comely maidens to love, literary bar-lizards (Myles Na nCopaleen, no less) to negotiate, mad-scientists to foil, and every lunge, plunge and parry of life must pun and rhythm and rhyme rigorously. 

It is a work that showcases writer Arthur Riordan’s delight in the rough and tumble of words: his relishing of the excruciatingly slow build-up to an even more excruciatingly cringe-worthy punchline; his delight in the perplexing paradoxes of double-entendre, homophone and homonym, and finally his perverse perseverance in getting the whole chaotic shebang to scan. Ranging from patter song to barber-shop, it is all decorously orchestrated through Bell Helicopter’s (Conor Kelly and Sam Park) jauntily witty musical score.

There are no sacred cows on this stage: the Brits are bashed, the IRA irked, Dev defiled and the Music-Hall mocked. And therein lies a niggling problem: Riordan strives to be even-handed in his apportioning of tongue-in-cheek jingoism, insists in being cynical about absolutely everything and refuses to do anything as old-hat as ‘taking a stand’. It means he steers admirably clear of mawkish sentimentality (an obvious complaint of works of this genre) but results in ‘Improbable Frequency’ failing to live up to the mark established by similarly themed but darkly satirical shows such as Joan Littlewood’s ‘Oh What A Lovely War’. Riordan’s carefully ambivalent attitude diminishes the possible clout of his anti-establishment meander since he avoids saying anything particularly forceful at all about this period and Ireland’s questionable pride in its ‘ethos of neutrality’. However, perhaps that’s the point. The show is to be celebrated as just a madcap, anarchic poke at the real and imaginary howlers of history.

Louis Lovett patters nimbly through a profuse panoply of extravagant lines and flaunts a pleasing tenor timbre for his numerous lyrical bursts: he is the puppy-dog-loveable, blond, Public - (private) -schooled English spy: Tristram. With a silver-tongued English cant that cuts like a rather fey knife, his precise, measured and well-drilled performance is the strongest in a strapping line-up of quality Irish actors. Whilst all their voices show the strain of two-and-a-half hours’ non-stop cavorting, it is a musical and thoroughly engaging troupe who reel, goose-step, and quick-change into more than a dozen (increasingly eccentric) characters.

Director Lynne Parker’s sure-footed revisit to this front makes for a rewarding night’s barrage of accurately aimed, often insane gags and niftily choreographed escapades. Sinead McKenna’s lighting whizzes and pulses to the beat of set-designer Alan Farquharson’s retrograde sci-fi machine, and an extra post-engagement ration of poteen is owed to the stage-manager who has to be particularly adroit supervising this multi-faceted game of musical shenanigans.

‘Improbable Frequency’ is frequently fun, energetic and eccentric. Moments may appear a little flippant but generally speaking, Rough Magic’s jolly barque is the very model of a major modern musical...

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