DOES art imitate life? Certainly the art of the playwright, the director, the actors and the members of the production team at the Lyric Theatre have brought personal stories to the stage and affected their audience in different ways.
The Gap Year is billed as three women in their 60s going on the adventure of a lifetime for castles, coffee and craic, and that's the way it begins - two friends sitting on the sofa having tea and chocolate biscuits.
Kate (Carol Moore) has just lost her husband and Oonagh's (Marion O'Dwyer) husband has hooked up with a florist called Flora and wants a divorce so, they think, the best thing is to get away for a holiday together.
They invite Roisin (Libby Smyth) who isn't in top form and needs a break. Where to? A week in a nice hotel in Fermanagh? Maybe go foreign? Or, like students, why not a gap year travelling to every county in Ireland?
And so starts the adventure. The story is slow to begin and probably a bit unrealistic, setting off for Donegal with three small tents and determined to 'clog' their experiences.
Kate tell Roisin it's not a clog: "Yes it is, you chat and then log it. It's a clog."
In Sligo they attend A&E where Oonagh gets her HRT patches and the nurse offers them a comfy bed for the night. Great news - but there's a catch. Her father Pat has had a stroke and the three end up looking after him but, big hearted as they are, they give their car to the nurse to make her life easier.
And that's where the camper van comes into the picture. In fact it was parked outside the theatre while the women were telling us their stories, stories that touched every member in the audience in one way or another.
The play takes shape as each woman talks to us about their lives, the trials and tribulations of married life, of bringing up children, of losing a loved one.
Of the three, for me anyway, Kate has the strongest storyline, grieving for her husband, estranged from her children, fearful of the future.
But there's something brewing with Roisin - little signs of memory loss - and then there's Oonagh, who says she was a needy child who admits she's still needy - after all, her man has left her for a florist.
During this journey we visit the shrine at Knock, a drag club in Dublin and in a very moving scene towards the end, when two doors in the landscape of Ireland open to revel New Grange, the perfect place for Kate to come to terms with the loss of her husband.
Roisin finds happiness, Oonagh finds love and Kate finds peace.
This play by Clare McMahon is very funny and full of pathos; as an actor and writer she has given us a play to ponder. We meet three women who spend 12 months together with barely a cross word, who support each other without question, who never get ill. Could that ever be?
This is a very streamlined play, the set is simple, the back wall of the stage showing beautifully painted fields and turf bogs of the countryside of Ireland, the sky changes according to the time of day, props glide silently on castors and the camper van is a masterpiece, with indicators flashing and lights glowing.
Frankie McCafferty plays a priest, two husbands and a bar tender, Keith Singleton becomes a lover and a gay drag artist and Meghan Tyler has six identities to master and brings the house down with her young mother and drunken nightclub 'it' girl.
In every case the acting is top class and the storyline is intriguing and has depth; it might benefit if tightened up a bit here and there, but from a slow start it gathers pace and draws you in.
::The Gap Year until September 25
lyrictheatre.co.uk
