Comedy about the Bomb

Unity Theatre: There's a Megabutton on My Living-room Floor

To provoke laughter on the theme of nuclear holocaust requires an unusual. offbeat talent. On the evidence of There's a Megabutton on My Living. room Floor at the Unity Theatre Stuart Douglas has that rare gift.

The farcical assumption on which his play proceeds is that the American President might choose, in the name of democracy, to thrust the decision of whether to release a nuclear stockpile on to an ordinary citizen. A Wemblev factory manager is chosen and his house suffers a nocturnal invasion by representatives of the American and British Govornments. The necessary machinery is set up in his living-room. The fatal decision rests with him.

Having established this explosive situation in the first act, Mr. Douglas fails to exploit it in the second. He toys promisinaly with the corrosive effect that the need to take such a decision would have on the man selected. But then he abandons himself to problems of mistaken iden-

tity and ;overnmental squabbles before reaching bis enigmatic climax.

However. his play is worth che*hing for~ its first act which neatly reverses the stock' evasive argument that there is no point in worrying about the-bomb since we shall} never have to make a decision concerningJ its use. And any play which persuades' members of the audience to place paperbags' over their heads as protection against:.pos-) sible fallout deserves respect.

In one way Brian Murphy's production; succeeds brilliantly. In the interval most' of the audience seemed convinced that

interruptions of the action by a member ofL the production staff, concerned for their; safety, were genuine. But in other ways? the production is overpitched. The menace of the initial invasion is lost in the generali slither and bellow and throughout the moodi of hysteria seems insufficiently controlled.j

Both Michael Cronin as the warmnonger-

ing American and Frank Doherty as the1 chosen citizen would double their effect if they halved the scale of their performances. Mary Kay, however, plays the anguished suburban wife with welcome restraint.