And there are many other such touches throughout which help to maintain the tone of knockabout buffoonery established by the script and performances. Bourke's script is clever and funny. Despite the broadness of the action, the play is tightly constructed and filled with incident. Director Mark Lambert keeps things moving at a good pace and draws good comic characterisations from his actors. The cast all have a fine time playing an amusing array of familiar stock characters.
Rocks is the swaggering British officer who converts easily into a barking mad pantomime villain.
He also plays the hero of the piece, and, with the aid of a stunt double and some turning of his head to disguise the fact that his lips are moving, gets to exchange insults and fight with himself at the climax. Tina Kellegher, a familiar face from TV's Ballykissangel and the film The Snapper , has fun as two lusty ladies from opposite social strata, the bereaved daughter and a local lass excited by tales of violence. Dawn Bradfield is less skilled as a farceur than her co-stars, but she acquits herself well nonetheless also in two roles. The Hunt for Red Willie is an entertaining comic farce intended for and suited to post Christmas shopping theatre for a general audience. Its pantomime flavour may not go down as well at any other time of the year, but for now at least it provides exactly what it promises in terms of cheerful laughter.