The Summer I Robbed a Bank Everyman Theatre Cork ★★★★☆ The joys of this Everyman presentation arise from the notions that Rex is exclusively a dog’s name and that a bank safe can be unlocked with a hairdryer. The Summer I Robbed a Bank, which Mark Doherty has adapted from the children’s book by his brother, the comedian David O’Doherty , has a hero, young Rex, who arrives on a reluctant visit to Achill Island armed only with a teenager’s weapons of a hoodie and earbuds. He is also vulnerable to the jokes about canine characteristics to which the otherwise friendly islanders are addicted.
The production unreels as if Roald Dahl had taken a lawnmower to Sesame Street. That children’s television series might come to mind as suspended clouds respond colourfully to events on a set built like the ground floor of a ziggurat, as it might also in the element of innocence in the writing and the playing, which captivates the young audience. Disbelief is instantly suspended for landscapes of hills and villages slipping past the windows of a train; for handbrake turns on precipitous mountain roads; for sleeting rain defying the plans of Rex, his Uncle Derm and his new friend Kitty; and for the absurd ubiquity of sheep.
Stephen O’Leary and Orla Scally in The Summer I Robbed A Bank. Photograph: Darragh Kane Beneath the pace and hilarity of the action lies a narrative in which the ruined castle of the pirate Grace O’Malley is to be sold to developers rather than resto.
