Enter Bewley’s Cafe Theatre any time soon for your lunchtime short play and you are bound to be in for a treat. The day we went, we caught culture and class, and a touch of ‘Roman Fever’, Michael James Ford’s direction of a Hugh Leonard dialogue based on the short story by Edith Wharton.

This was a truly fantastic rendering of a short story. It felt like the experience of reading it. All the cleverness of the original was preserved and delivered in great performances by Maria Tecce (above) and Caitriona Ní Mhurchu, who took over her role with only four days’ notice.

Visually, it makes a great tableau, simply staged, to portray a cafe overlooking the city of Rome. The actresses play two American society ladies in their forties who share memories of their respective courtships in the city, twenty years previously.

Maria Tecce doesn’t hold back, and hides nothing of her character, and when she starts to boast and sneer and goad the other woman, we know we are in for a long session. The two would have come to blows several times under the pressure and the thinly-veiled bourgeois bitchiness but for their aristocratic reserve. With this kind of history between the two women, there is bound to be a revelation, and it comes as a sting in the tail at the end of the thirty-five minutes.

My companion found waiter, Alberto Albertino, charming. He assisted us to get our soup and poured us glasses of water before the performance, where he appeared as the waiter in the play. We thought it was great value. Nothing compares to the live experience.

www.bewleyscafetheatre.com for upcoming events

Above: Maria Tecce is also a jazz singer and cabaret artiste www.mariatecce.com