Review: The Truth Is a Sticky Business in The Honey Trap

Two soldiers go out for a beer and flirt with a pair of local women. They banter and dance, and then both women take one of the soldiers back to a hotel. Later, he turns up dead, shot in the head.

What exactly happened to him and who was responsible for his death are the questions that run through Leo McGann’s riveting new play, The Honey Trap, now running at Irish Repertory Theatre under Matt Torney’s brisk direction. Torney grew up in Belfast amid the violence and bomb scares of the Troubles, the three-decade-long conflict often seen as being between Protestant loyalists and Catholic republicans. But McGann, also a Belfast native, suggests that the Troubles involved a third group as well, the British security forces who met with deadly resistance from groups like the IRA.

PhD candidate Emily (Molly Ranson), proudly Irish American with tightly braided red hair (wig and hair design by Tommy Kurzman), wants to hear from this third group for her oral history on the Troubles (because Irish culture is hers too, she says). So, she comes to Belfast to interview Dave (Michael Hayden), the former British soldier whose friend was assassinated after that night of boozing back in 1979.

“We’re thrilled that you’re telling your truth,” Emily says with collegiate self-assurance. “My truth?” retorts the gruff, middle-aged Dave. “No. The truth.” He’s the only person Emily can find who knows anything about this now cold case, so we’re inclined to believe him. Hayden has so much charisma in the role, it’s hard not to.

But should we? Through flashbacks to that drunken night, we see young Dave (Daniel Marconi giving an emotionally layered performance) and his army buddy Bobby (a hilariously awkward Harrison Tipping) trying to pick up, unbeknownst to them, two IRA volunteers, Kirsty (Doireann Mac Mahon) and Lisa (Annabelle Zasowski). As Dave relates these events, it becomes apparent that his description of that evening might not be entirely accurate, and we start to wonder who in this play we can actually believe.

Barely giving us a chance to muddle that over, McGann adds a zinger of a plot twist that quickly turns the play into an all-out thriller. Turning the tables on Emily, Dave sets out on his own journey to discover what exactly happened that night—and ultimately to exact revenge for the murder of his friend.

Without giving anything away, I’ll say that The Honey Trap is one of the most riveting psychological thrillers I’ve seen onstage in some time. Not only does the play tap into the destructive effects of PTSD during wartime and the dangers that British soldiers faced during the Troubles, but it lends itself to an examination of our own chosen recollections of the past and the motives that cause us to deliberately forget inconvenient truths.

Strong performances across the board give this production heft. Ranson is utterly convincing as a seemingly poised student who nevertheless is triggered when her Irish bona fides are called into question. Marconi and Tipping make a comedic pair as they try to score at the bar with all the grace of toddlers at a petting zoo. Samantha Mathis has us hanging on every word as the mysterious Sonia, who may have the answers Dave is searching for. And Hayden dominates the stage as we watch Dave wrestle with memories, trauma, and a secret guilt that has driven his need for revenge.

Torney keeps the two-hour, 20-minute play moving at an edge-of-your-seat pace with the help of Charlie Corcoran’s versatile set and Nicole Rozanski’s simple props, which allow for seamless scene changes from interview room to bar to bedroom. Michael Gottlieb’s dreamlike lighting, Sarita Fellows’s period costumes, and James Garver’s smart sound design convincingly get us back to the ’70s.

Slowing things down in the second act is a lengthy speech during an especially tense scene that gets into the nitty-gritty of what happened to Bobby. This is the only place that the air escapes the balloon at bit, but it’s short-lived, and McGann makes up for it with a last-minute twist—one last gotcha in a smart play.