Bewley’s Café Theatre, Dublin Until Jan 30 1.10pm 115 (incl light lunch) bewleyscafetheatre.com 086-8784001

A poet never speaks directly, says WB Yeats, “as to someone at the breakfast table; there is always a phastamagoria”. Edward Callan’s bio-drama of the man has Yeats telling us this directly, with little in the way of phantasmagoria, and continues to assemble its text from the tumult of poetry, letters and public utterances that Yeats left behind.

Attempting to reveal something of the man behind the letters, Focus’s production never quite proves that this hugely public figure left much more to reveal. As Yeats, Bosco Hogan presents a recognisably precious figure in a neat tweed suit and a curtain of hair, but also lends Yeats a warmth he never seemed to radiate in life – not to mention a steady baritone to match the regal stride of the poems.

That voice slips easily between remembrance of Maude Gonne and his bewildering dalliances with fascism and the occult into unforced recitals of He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven and No Second Troy, as though Yeats thought in verse. Callan’s general reluctance to put words in Yeats’s mouth thickens a sense of reverence for the writer and national emblem, but the occasional anecdote goes some way to cracking the veneer – nowhere more so than Yeats’s celebration of winning the Nobel Prize by cooking sausages at midnight.

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