Reginald Theatre, May 15 Remember when humour and bad taste were allowed to share spittle in the same mouth? David Ireland does. The Belfast playwright has his characters spewing countless lines that leave you unsure whether laughing isnât a little naughty. Yet not laughing is impossible, because what theyâre saying is so damned funny and provocative. Irelandâs secret is to satirise his three characters with affection, even as they come to find each otherâs behaviour or perspectives repugnant. Leigh Carver (Brian Meegan) is an English director who has cast Oscar-winning US actor Jay Conway (Jeremy Waters) in a new play by Ulster playwright Ruth Davenport (Harriet Gordon-Anderson). The three assemble the night before rehearsals begin, and, in the finest comic tradition, Ireland makes them credible and caricatured simultaneously. Initially Jay is a grotesque, quizzing Leigh about whom he would rape if someone held a gun to his head. No, there are no sacred cows in Irelandâs play, and points of view â notably identity politics â are both championed and mercilessly lampooned.