“You’re terrific. You’re terrific. You’re fired.”  Like so many, Willy waved goodbye to the school yard at twelve years old to hone his trade.  With his two-tiered toolbox in his little soft hands and his blue van, off he went to fit his city’s carpets.  He found a girl, settled down and just relaxed, as the song goes.  Life was good and work was endless, just like the offers of cups of tea from (almost) all the kitchens of Dublin.
 
Losing your job can be the death of anyone, but at fifty-four, with nothing to fall back on but a house built of toolboxes and a housewife singing along to a song of false hopes, the dream dies, and along with it, a man’s spirit.  He is exhausted, his hands are hard and sore, and he is sick of standing in the endless line for hatch 23 in the Social Welfare Office.  

Inspired by the characters in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and the two actors’ parents, this story is told with impassioned honesty and straightforwardness.  Albeit a rather long and rambling route of narrative, there are some key moments which allow for the more dramatically striking realization of this all-familiar story; the couple’s shared kiss over bowls of tinned orange, Shaun Dunne’s heartbreaking father-daughter talk, and Lauren Larkin’s poignant karaoke scene.
 

Star rating: ★★★