Noah and the Tower Flower

Not much happens in "Noah and the Tower Flower," but what does happen in this gritty two-hander, the first play by Irish writer Sean McLoughlin, is heart-stopping. Noah and Natalie begin chatting in a pub in Dublin's Ballymun area, a working-class housing project that rapidly deteriorated into a slum. Noah has just been released from jail, imprisoned after altercations with both his father and a nightclub bouncer. Natalie is a "tower flower," a name Noah and his pals have bestowed on the young girls living in Ballymun. She quickly reveals that she's a recovering heroin addict but is looking for better things now that Ballymun is being demolished and she's slated to move into a new apartment.

Natalie finally invites Noah to her flat but just for a drink or two—and nothing else. Once there, a romantic connection begins to take hold, but Natalie, having gone through a bad relationship, is uncertain. Her doubts deepen when Noah produces a gun he's been carrying around. Noah, however, is determined to prove that they can get together. If the plot is formulaic, McLoughlin's vivid and truthful writing makes it seem as if this is all happening for the first time. And when Natalie puts to the test Noah's repeated promise that he would never slap her around, it's electrifying theater.

The show has been sensitively directed by Jim Culleton, and much of its meld of power and charm lies in the performances of Mary Murray and Darren Healy. They were Natalie and Noah in Dublin, where the play won the Irish Times Award for best play in 2007, and also on tour in Europe, and there's not a false breath on stage. With a twisted smile and taut stillness, Murray makes you fairly ache for Natalie's vulnerability. Healy's wiry body is alive with tics, smiles, and laughs, only partially covering the neediness and tendency to violence that lie beneath. His spot-on impersonations of Robert De Niro, Noah's movie idol, add greatly to the humor that seasons the script.

To be sure, the dialect is bog thick, and the talk is loaded with argot (the program does provide a glossary of terms), but there's little doubt as to what's happening between these two people. It makes you hope that despite their bleak circumstances, they can, as Noah promises, indeed make it.

Presented by Fishamble: The New Play Company and the Drilling Company as part of 1st Irish 2011 at the Drilling Company, 236 W. 78th St., 3rd floor, NYC. Sept. 7–Oct. 2. Mon. and Sun., 7 p.m.; Wed.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m. (212) 868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.