Ulster American review: Woody Harrelson and Andy Serkis are on top form in savage satire of Hollywood hypocrisy

Sometimes theatremakers like to opine that seeing plays builds empathy, makes you a better person. Sometimes that’s even true. But probably not if they’re the handiwork of David Ireland. Ulster American is a comedy that’s so messed up that watching it makes you feel tainted, somehow (it’s worse if you actually laugh!). Jeremy Herrin’s all-star revival dials up the surrealism in this 2018 Edinburgh fringe hit to produce something violently funny, the ghost of a message rising from the carnage.

Two implausibly big Hollywood names are on board here, and they’re on stellar form. Woody Harrelson (freed up by the Writers Guild of America strike) plays self-obsessed household name actor Jay, who’s being buttered up by British director Leigh (Andy Serkis) like he’s an uncommonly dry crumpet. Jay’s star power is what Leigh needs to sell his show, so he’s forced to react with increasingly strained affability to his provocative conversation starters. Even when they’re thought experiments about raping Princess Diana.

Much of Ireland’s humour here springs out of the yawning gap between the self-righteous faces people show to the world and the ugly realities behind them: hypocrisy, in all its infinite grotesque flavours.

Leigh and Jay both style themselves as progressive, leftie feminists in theory, but that soon falls away when they’re confronted with the play’s staunchly principled Ulster author Ruth (the brilliantly forthright Louisa Harland) – who’s not going to let them get away with running roughshod over her ideas. When the two men air their offensively ignorant views on Northern Irish politics, this play’s already tense interactions explode into scenery-destroying carnage, with Max Jones’s beautifully naturalistic living room set revealing grim surprises.

Director Herrin brings out the very best in this starry trio of actors. Harrelson’s performance is huge, physical and ridiculous: he absentmindedly caresses Serkis’s nipples, thunks out dramatic chords on the piano, or menacingly shakes jam jars of green juice. It’s on the edge of too much, but it’s tempered by Serkis’s quiet self-loathing and pierced by Harland’s incredulous facial expressions or white-hot justified fury.

Ulster American was written in 2018, and although the text has had some judicious updates, it does show its age a little: the white heat of Leigh’s rage about Brexit feels too fresh, and Ruth’s threats to call out sexism on Twitter/X feel naive, a libel risk rather than a gotcha.

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Five years on, we’ve arguably slipped into a new political era, one where celebs no longer feel the need to pay extravagant lip service to progressive ideas – or face dire online consequences if they don’t. But Ireland’s satire is weird and dark enough to have retained its bite. It’s a bracing, brutal reminder of the hypocrisy that lurks underneath lofty ideals.

Riverside Studios, until 27 January