Writing a bad review is a risky thing. Or, rather, writing a review in which I judge a production to be bad. After all, who the hell do I think I am? For it to be of worth, such a criticism has to come from a place of goodwill.

For many reasons, I wish that At Peace by Declan Gorman had worked. A play that addresses issues of multiculturalism, integration, and diversity in modern Ireland is welcome, necessary even. A play that casts actors from immigrant and indigenous populations, and weaves through it mythological themes from their cultures and our own, is an exciting prospect on paper. One which isn’t afraid to look at our own native enmities and prejudices, and one which places the nationalist/loyalist split in the broader context of cultural difference. However, a play which gets public money to travel the country in (mostly) small community venues, with the intention of, presumably, reaching audiences drawn from immigrant populations as well as the host community, carries a certain responsibility. Using theatre for awareness-raising or community-building purposes – good old-fashioned agitprop – can work, but it carries risks. The same effects can be achieved by lectures or public discussions or musical evenings, or simple storytelling. I’m assuming – perhaps wrongly – that the intended audience may not have sat through many full-length plays before, and it is, therefore, important that the experience is a good one, if one cares about theatre.

Whether or not the play succeeds as agitprop is not really my interest – my focus is theatrical, centred on the experience of sitting through the play, and whether or not I was engaged, entertained, and (imagining it’s my first time in the theatre) whether it would encourage me to go see more plays. Sadly, this play disappointed me greatly. Poorly directed, with technical problems on the opening night that resulted in an anxiety-inducing lack of simultaneous translation, the script failed to engage me, an unhappy mix of melodrama and unforgivable longeurs, with really awkward elements that involved superstition and myth.

There is a way of maximising the input of those who have not had much acting experience – amateur theatre productions can be greatly enjoyable after all – and it calls for a strong directorial vision, a tight script, and playing to each cast member’s strengths. The humour and grace of the Nigerian cast members, for example, was lost in the collage; I’d have enjoyed a short one-act with them alone telling us their stories and sharing their music, dances and cultural references.

After the show, however, I was left with a very uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was bored, I was tense, I was angry. It is a big ask, a full two-act play, and when it’s not working it can be very stressful to sit through. There were mawkish soap-opera plots, such as a love affair across two different traditions, brothers fighting drunkenly leaving one in a coma, crucial evidence supporting one asylum-seeker’s application being discovered just in the nick of time. I have to question how this play was assessed as being eligible for public money – having good intentions is simply not enough. The one striking piece of choreography, a sequence in which a Nigerian woman is being deported, was overlaid with a commentary that had interesting elements, a quirky plane’s-eye-view of Ireland and those who had died that night; but it was combined with a PC message that was far too simplistic – all deportees are just unlucky, good people. A woman near me was crying at the end of this sequence, and I can see why it would appeal to the notion that we are a loving generous people and the nasty bureaucrats are evil meddlers that cruelly split families apart for the sake of it.

But it really isn’t that simple. Theatre offers us the opportunity to work through complex arguments and listen to differing worldviews, can challenge us to think and to question and imagine, to dream and to live through nightmares; it can enable us to explore our confusion and ambivalence about change, about difference, about notions of identity. There was obviously a lot of goodwill and enthusiasm at the opening night willing the endeavour to succeed; do I need to say that it is uncomfortable for me to go against this tide? This production fell short of the mark on far too many scores, and so, for me it was, sadly, a missed opportunity.