YOU have to admire an unfunded theatre company going after a beefy play like Farrell’s ‘I Do Not Like Thee, Dr Fell’. It takes seven actors, observes the unity of time and place and its theme is both a hoot and exploration of the sinister. God knows, group therapy sessions can make a body shrivel as well as shrink. Still, Maurice O’Sullivan of Torch Players summons his decades of experience, and the experience of his solid troupe to make a polished job of this black comedy.
Peter Hayes exercises his IQ as the eponymous Dr who is party to psychotherapy sessions run by the mid-Atlantic Susie (Jeanne O’Connor). Fond of roguish parts, Mícheál O Dubhghaill takes the rise out of out much as Roger (first played in The Abbey Theatre by Liam Neeson) and Mary Harvey is cast against nature as a doddery Rita.
Crowded? Make room for Pat Kelly as Peter the Builder; his nervy, put-upon missus (Joanne O’Brien) and the sole character exempt from self-examination, neurosis, exposition, humiliation and ‘sharing’, caretaker Ollie Hayes, real life father to Peter (Dr Fell).
Punch’s Hotel is being made over to a proper, raked auditorium for this Bernard Farrell hit. Make way for laughs and outrage from Tuesday February 26-Saturday March 2, 8pm shows.
