This was a reviewer's nightmare: sitting stony-faced in a theatre while the audience is howling with laughter. Written by Marie Jones, this two-hander came with impeccable plaudits - it scooped the 2001 Olivier Award for best comedy and one of its performers won the Olivier Award for best actor - and it reached London's West End from its low-key start in Belfast purely on word of mouth. Sean Sloan and Louis Dempsey play 15 extras in a movie blockbuster being filmed in Ireland's County Kerry where, strangely, they seem to have Northern Irish accents. There's GBP40 (HK$440) a day to be earned, then spent that night in the pub. There's Caroline Giovanni, the American star, to be lusted over. Aislin, the pretty, anxious second assistant director, to be pulled into line by. There's the full effects of Hollywood's cultural colonialism on a rural community to be contemplated. Sloan and Dempsey come up with some very funny moments, particularly their (many) parts in the wedding celebration scene. They can be slick, absurd, charming, silly, and are excellent at cross-cutting into new characters: Dempsey bent over as ancient grouch Mickey, famous locally for being the last surviving extra in John Wayne's The Quiet Man; Sloan primping and wafting about as Caroline. They work best, though, as the double act of Jake Quinn and Charlie Conlon, a couple of local underdogs. This play isn't meant to be pantomine, though. It's a comment on the ruthless, exploitative film business; on rural poverty; on dreams and the dream industry; on the disruptive effect a film crew can have on a small Irish town. A pity, then, that it lurches so obviously from poignancy to parody, from the bleak to the bravura. Cut to final scene: a feel-good ending - yes, very Hollywood, very send-up - that failed in its satire for the same reason as the rest of the play. Today-Mar 10, 8pm; Mar 9, 2.30pm. City Hall Theatre, Central. $160-$280 Urbtix.
