As we watch Robert Emmet (Elliot Moriarty) deliver his historic speech, after being sentenced to death for treason, the idea of a rotting system leaps out, providing topical resonances for today, the fulcrum of the efforts of this brilliant company that have woken ghosts from their haunted slumber.
 
These ghosts include journalists, lawyers, judges, and the accused - for example, Myles Joyce, who was wrongly convicted of the Maamtrasna murders in 1882, and sentenced to death in a language he didn't understand. James Joyce, who often sat watching trials was moved to write about this in his 1907 essay Ireland at the Bar, and in the trial scene of HCE in Finnegans Wake - real people finding their way into "real" fiction. And this is the premise of this affecting, interesting piece - as we are taken into judges' chambers, and a prisoner's cell, moving lightly so that we might not disturb a building that has housed IRA prisoners, and the innocent and guilty, conflicting stories, and complicated histories.
 
Green Street became the Special Criminal Court in 1972, and was bombed in 1976, its place in Irish history focal. Percolate have conflated time periods, from the 19th to the 20th centuries, but when Emmet delivers his famous speech, we are transported; we may have lived with it all these years, but Green Street reminds us of why it remains important.

Star rating: ★★★★

Siobhán Kane attended a preview performance of Green Street