Galway is awash with Walsh. Four plays from one of Ireland's more original and disquieting playwrights darken the stages of Druid and GYT: this city's two most innovative theatre companies. It is Druid's production of 'The New Electric Ballroom' directed by writer Enda Walsh himself that provides audiences with both the greatest challenges and also niggling doubts.

Rosaleen Linehan.

Three sisters in a remote fishing village have incarcerated themselves at home. They engage little with the outside world and they while away the years repeating the same story to themselves at the same time every day. The two elder sisters tell their younger sister of a moment in their teens where love failed them at 'The New Electric Ballroom', a showband concert hall. The occasion should have led either one or the other to a 'wondrous place' far from small-town eyes but failing to be 'properly kissed' and the consequent disappointment has embittered them. Encased by designer Sabine Dargent's appositely sharp and metallic grey set with encroaching rock walls, the sisters find the outside world is harsh, the village claustrophobic and 'inside is safe'. They are women damaged and 'stamped by story' and 'boxed by words' and this is the lesson hammered home to younger sister Ada. Even the regular intervention of Patsy, fishmonger and jittery natterer, will not draw them out.

'The New Electric Ballroom' pre-dates 'The Walworth Farce' and 'Small Things' and also pre-empts them stylistically and thematically. It too is a strange and difficult play and it is definitely Enda Walsh territory: dislocated and unconventional narrative, irregular passing of time, dark and soiled memories for lonely characters who have retreated into themselves, disenfranchised people who are well onto the descent to insanity.This could be Beckett in Technicolor: Walsh digs into humanity's interior world with similar strokes but dresses Beckett's distinctively sparse, monochromatic text and bleak mise-en-scène in a more florid, poetic language and extravagant drama.

The central characters have created a nihilistic existence for themselves. Their repetitive story-telling lulls them into a sense of security, and it is a ritual that will never cease. They are pessimistic sisters then, but through Walsh's often lyrical descriptions of lust and love's ability to elevate and enliven human experience, 'The New Electric Ballroom' is, paradoxically, a play that is positive and reaffirming. It is the most optimistic and romantic of Walsh's recent work.

This production is directed by Walsh himself and consequently it provides an opportunity to see a work as envisaged by its creator: Druid's production is pure, undiluted, inviolate Walsh. This does, however, raise interesting questions about the role of theatre director. Intense and complex, the play demands an unusual degree of concentration of its audience and Walsh, the writer, clearly relishes the tension he creates, teasing and perplexing them with ambiguities: they must work hard making inferences and joining the dots. This is to be celebrated, for no one goes to see his work and expects to have their sense or sensibilities cosseted. A director, however, mediates the message. He or she takes a slant, and, correctly or incorrectly, crassly or subtly, makes a stab at interpreting the play. Walsh, the director, makes (or fails to make) directorial decisions which indicate that he cannot distance himself far enough from his text. He knows what he means, but does not always deliver this to his audience. In his desire to offer-up his text untouched by another, some of the meaning is perversely obfuscated and too many questions unanswered.

Despite these misgivings, Druid's production is typically disciplined and well-drilled with powerful performances from Rosaleen Linehan, Val Lilley, Catherine Walsh and Mikel Murfi. Inevitably, a play that tackles language, love and loneliness is going to be challenging. It is a difficult play, but that's what Arts Festivals can afford to nurture and celebrate.

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