Irish Rep's Ambitious Memory Play Falls Flat

I was really excited to see The Honey Trap at Irish Rep. The dual timelines, the interesting dramatic structure, the thrilling political intrigue... I knew I'd be drawn in.

The trouble is, I wasn't.

The Honey Trap follows Michael Hayden (Dave), a former British soldier being interviewed by Molly Ranson (Emily) about his experience in Belfast during The Troubles. As he recounts his version of events, we watch them too, transported back to 1979 where Daniel Marconi (Young Dave) convinces his friend and fellow solider Harrison Tipping (Bobby) to go out on the town where they hit it off with two striking Irish girls, Doireann Mac Mahon (Kirsty) and Annabelle Zasowski (Lisa). The young soldiers think they're getting lucky, but its a honey trap to lure British officers to their deaths with false romance. A sudden change of heart spares Young Dave as he calls it a night early, but Bobby ends up going home with the girls where he's killed by the IRA. In the present day, Dave still seeks revenge to sooth his own guilt over Bobby's death, so he steals Emily's project notes to find the one other person from that fateful night who is still alive. Samantha Mathis (Sonia) runs a quiet coffee shop now. Dave spends act two setting and springing his own honey trap, wooing Sonia as "Charlie", luring her to his hotel where he drops the facade and confronts her at gunpoint.

On paper, it's a compelling – if a bit incredulous – story. On stage though, the execution was lacking.

For me, the issues began almost immediately. The staging of two-people-sitting-at-a-table-talking is a challenging one, doubly so when one of the characters is a researcher who is trying to stay neutral and objective in their interviewing. Ranson struggles to climb a difficult hill as the interviewer at the table. Matt Torney's direction should get some of the blame here, as theres only so much two-people-sitting-at-a-table we can reasonably be expected to engage with. Hayden, sitting across from Ranson as her obstinate interviewee, has a much more dynamic part to play. He does his best to try and carry the modern day scenes through the first act and he mostly succeeds, but Dave isn't exactly a character you fall in love with. When he feels like the only actual character on stage for a lot of act one, its tough.

Once we flash back in Dave's memory to 1979 Belfast, things get significantly better. Marconi and Tipping have great chemistry together and play off each other with ease in the bar scene, a dynamic that's only heightened when Mac Mahon and Zasowski join the equation. The banter among the four young characters is fun, natural, and imbued with an insidious, dramatic-irony fueled tension. I wanted much more of them all at the bar, especially the women, whose performances are both very solid.

Alas, the structure of the play must take us back to Emily and Dave in the present day, where there isn't any chemistry to be found. While the choice to portray Emily as a firmly neutral observer interview makes sense narratively, it leaves much to be desired dramatically. The few times that she actually reacts to Dave's antics in any way all feel forced, especially when they become plot devices to advance Dave's incredulous scheme to steal her private interview notes in a bid to track down those he holds responsible for Bobby's death.

I could forgive the format flop if more had been done with it. If we got some tangible view of how Dave's memories are flawed and biased, or if we got more than cursory mentions of the unexplored complexities of the "three way conflict" that was the Troubles, it would've been worthwhile. But we don't. Overall I was disappointed with Torney's direction. The Honey Trap was full of directorial choices that felt more like a high-quality college or graduate school production, rather than those of a professional NYC production, and at times felt downright lazy. The intermission playlist of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Zombie" was particularly eye-roll inducing.

The second act keeps the dual timelines, but brings a blissful reprieve from the stilted interview format as we focus on the present day, with Dave laying his own honey trap. Mathis gives a strong performance as the two older characters banter back and forth in an echo of their younger selves at that Belfast bar in 1979. It's high drama and the tension builds yet again as Sonia begins to open up to Dave. Eventually relenting to his advances, she agrees to go to dinner where, for a little while, it seems like the play might take a more reconciliatory turn. There's a deep, unspoken tragedy of the meeting in act one; strip away the duplicitous politics and it seems like those four young people might actually enjoy each others company. Act two brings the same feeling, but with more hope, since its conclusion isn't set. We can't help but wonder if, against all odds, there could be some real romance brewing, or at the very least, the chance to heal decades-old wounds. The Honey Trap builds that house of cards quite well and, just when we might start to believe it, Dave springs his trap, convincing Sonia to "dine and dash" as a pretext to get her back to his hotel room. She leaves first and Dave waits a second before opening his wallet and thumbing out a few bills to leave with the check.

The back end of the play escalates quickly when Dave waits, pistol in hand, for Sonia to emerge from the bathroom back at his hotel room. He confronts her, forcing her into a chair to begin the interrogation he's fantasized over for 40 years. Unfortunately, the tension falls apart just as quickly as it builds. The immediate danger dissipates as it feels like both characters forget that one of them holds a loaded gun as they talk back and forth. In the moments where we snap back into the violent, gun-point tension, it doesn't feel real anymore.

Overall, its an unfortunate miss. As Nicole Serratore wrote in her review for ExeuntNYC, there's no shortage of "big knotty issues" and complex, compelling character dynamics to be mined here... but The Honey Trap stays mostly on the surface. I wanted to be drawn in, to invest in the characters, and care about the outcome, but no one made me, at least not in a sustained way.