New Electric Ballroom

Driven to near-insanity by their self-imposed isolation, three sisters in a remote Irish fishing village are haunted by memories of heartbreak. Years have passed since the two older siblings last ventured from their abode to seek out the bright lights of the New Electric Ballroom, tempted there by the promise of soft kisses and sexual thrills.

But in a village where gossip spreads like seeds in the wind the girls' teenage indiscretions did not go unnoticed, and Brenda and Clara consequently found themselves “marked” from early on.

The suffocating effects of parochial life are laid bare in Enda Walsh's beautiful, dark tale of disenchanted love and wasted lives, in which the sisters' static existence is mirrored by the circular rhythms of the sea. Young sister Ada's only chance to escape her sisters' fate is in the arms of stuttering, lonely fishmonger Patsy, who regularly washes up to their door with the incoming tide, bearing his latest catch.

A London council flat provided the setting for last year's The Walworth Farce, Walsh's critically acclaimed drama that brought the horrors of domestic violence into focus. In New Electric Ballroom the audience is transported into another family abode with a fabulous set that recreates the three sisters' sparsely decorated living room.

This intimate, beautifully written play subtly blends humour and pathos as it mourns the ruined lives of the three bitter women. Moving performances from Rosaleen Linehan and Val Lilley as Brenda and Clara carry the narrative well, and Mikel Murfi's painfully vulnerable, dim-witted Patsy is almost painful to watch. But the character of Ada remains somewhat redundant in comparison, acting merely as spectator to her sisters' stories until the conclusion of the play. Walsh's latest offering is a flawed but glittering production.