In the Octagon Theatre's play Looking, an ending before something really begins and a bit of a muddle getting to the finish line is par for the course.
That's not to say there is anything muddled about this funny, finely tuned production.
Looking is about four single, middle-aged people who meet in a pub called The Private Dick, two of them there to support their mates in the fraught field of first-time blind dating.
Canadian playwright Norm Foster's plays are known for their humour and insight into ordinary people's lives. In the wrong hands, his trademark irony, wit and saucy action, and the opportunity to sensitively expose characters' insecurities, can be sacrificed to cheap-laughs vulgarity. But in the hands of a good director, a comedy like Looking offers so much more, as the Octagon's production proves. Director Cynthia Cahill keeps a measured hand on this play of many acts, treating the material with intelligence and respect. The characters are brilliantly cast.
Nick Green plays hard-up, hapless, brash Andy to the exact measure of irritating, funny and likeable. Andy's humble, almost bumbling, near-soliloquy at the play's end is a tribute to Green's acting talent as much as the director's decision to go for heartfelt rather than schmaltz.