What would Freud make of the suggestion to seek psychological healing in a booze-fueled rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart? Early 20th century Vienna didn't have karaoke, so we can only guess. Ruth McGowan's Love Song For Losers imagines the karaoke bar as a public confessional, as seven self-confessed losers step forward to explain their pitiless shame and regret to the bar before taking the microphone and seeking soppy catharsis in a sentimental ballad.

There's a recovering drug addict/failed actor (Neill Fleming), an embarrassed journalist forced to move in with her mother in Ballina after becoming an accidental Youtube star in New York (AnnMarie O'Donovan) and a gay man mourning the death of a lover who lived a secret life (Adam Henshaw), to name three. With the performers tucked in amongst the audience in the downstairs of the Stag's Head, Love Songs For Losers is an intimate, fully licensed affair.

While McGowan leans far too hard on the prevailing desolation gnawing at the Irish psyche, each maudlin tale is somehow uplifted by the off-key song that follows. Whatever about the universal nature of misery, it is hard to leave this performance without greater respect for the uplifting quality of badly-sung pop music.