Belfast-born playwright David Ireland’s Ulster American drops its audience into a conversation between a middleweight English stage director, Leigh Carver (Brian Meegan), and Hollywood actor Jay Conway (Jeremy Waters), who is booked to star in an upcoming production of a new play on the Northern Irish Troubles. The playwright, Ruth, is on her way but running late.

Brian Meegan and Jeremy Waters in Ulster American. Photo © Prudence Upton

The interaction between the two men is wince-inducing. Jay is convinced the Bechdel Test was devised by a man. Leigh has got through adult life thinking the African American novelist James Baldwin is the younger brother of actor Alec Baldwin.

Conversation comes to a shuddering halt (and the audience emits a collective gasp) when Jay posits a hypothetical based on a deleted scene from a movie of his. Leigh is blindsided, disgusted. But does he hurl Jay out of his house and sack him from the production – from a show with a shot at a West End run and a Broadway transfer? No, he does not. What’s worse, he even has an answer to Jay’s question.

Enter an already harried Ruth (Harriet Gordon-Anderson)....