Inis Nua presents Lee Coffey's 'Leper + Chip'

Meet not-so-cute

Leper (Liam Mulshine) works security at a friend’s house party. Chip (Katie Stahl) and her bored friends want to raise some hell, so Chip’s assigned to distract the bouncer upstairs. Those aren’t their real names, but in the scruffier parts of Dublin, Chip tells us, “any nickname you hate sticks.” By the time Leper and Chip discover their mutual attraction, a brawl rages in the kitchen, and Leper and mates square off against Chip and her crew. When the girls escape, the boys vows revenge.

Most of the action occurs in a 24-hour period and their romance, such as it is, unfolds through the characters’ direct address to the audience. This method is an Irish-playwright specialty, and the pair often humorously contradict one another. “So I lie,” Chip tells us. Leper then remarks, “The chat is going well.” Later, Chip asks herself, “Do I text him first?” while Leper simultaneously decides, “I can’t text her first.”

Can't help but hope

The tale is richly complicated and brutally bloody, but also hilarious and sincere enough that we can't help but hope for a happy ending. Stahl and Mulshine make convincing drifting young adults who drink, fuck, and live by crude street ethics, yet must answer to Mum or Da if they stay out late. Their Dublin accents are appropriately thick and coarse but always understandable (dialect coach Leonard Kelly deserves praise), and Inis Nua supplies a brief glossary for the few slang terms still unclear in context.

Their performances are all the more impressive given that director Tom Reing stages Leper + Chip with the audience on four sides of the small cement square of street created by scenic designer Meghan Jones. Neither actor leaves the stage, though each gets a break when the other takes over. Shon Causer's lighting illustrates the punches, kicks, slaps, stabs, and gunshots and sculpts the play as it moves through many locations and the two characters' points of view.

Coffey's wild adventure builds to a final moment that echoes Romeo and Juliet in a way that's poetic, inevitable, and right. Leper + Chip lasts only 65 minutes, but lingers long after.