Doireann Mac Mahon (left) as Kirsty, Michael Hayden (front) as Dave, Harrison Tipping (right) as Bobby, and Annabelle Zasowski (far right) as Lisa, in Leo McGann’s The Honey Trap, set in Belfast during the height of the Troubles.
Leo McGann’s The Honey Trap, tautly directed by Matt Torney at the Irish Rep, probes memory, violence, and reckoning in Belfast. What begins as a seemingly ordinary night in 1979 reverberates across decades, forcing one soldier to confront the shadows of his past.
Set in Belfast during the height of the Troubles, The Honey Trap follows two off-duty British soldiers whose night of drinking and flirtation takes a perilous turn. The play opens in a quiet pub somewhere in England in the present day, with American researcher Emily (Molly Ranson) interviewing Dave (Michael Hayden), a former British solider in his late 50s, about the fateful night in 1979 when he and fellow soldier Bobby (Harrison Tipping) encountered two young women, Lisa (Annabelle Zasowski) and Kirsty (Doireann Mac Mahon), in a Belfast pub.
IRA agents Kirsty (Mac Mahon, left) and Lisa (Zasowski) lure British soldier Dave (Daniel Marconi) in McGann’s historical thriller.
What seemed like harmless flirtation turned out to be an IRA setup: Bobby was lured into the tryst and was executed, while Dave (Dave’s younger version is played by Daniel Marconi) left early and returned to his barracks. At its heart, The Honey Trap is less about the incident itself than about the long shadow it casts—Dave’s decades of unshakable trauma and the ghosts of a war that refuse to let him go.
Written while McGann was pursuing his MFA, The Honey Trap debuted in Washington, DC, in 2023 with Solas Nua, in association with the Kennedy Center, where it drew praise for its layered depiction of the sectarian violence leading up to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The Irish Rep gave the play a staged reading in 2024, and as artistic director Charlotte Moore and producing director Ciarán O’Reilly remark in the program: “We were lured into its murky web.”
Tipping (right) as British soldier Bobby and Daniel Marconi as young Dave, a fellow British soldier, in a Belfast pub.
The current production takes flight with a sterling cast, led by Michael Hayden as the embittered British soldier Dave. Though he consents to be interviewed by Emily for her American oral history project, Dave has his guard up from the start. When Emily innocently asks what he had for breakfast to test her Dictaphone’s levels, Hayden’s Dave pauses, then shoots back with dry sarcasm: “A dodo egg omelet and a woolly mammoth steak. And a clementine.”
Molly Ranson’s Emily proves a perfect foil to Dave. Where he is jaded, she is idealistic—a PhD student convinced her project could meaningfully illuminate both the Troubles and the peacebuilding that followed the Good Friday Agreement. As she explains to the skeptical Dave:
Emily: This could become a template for how the history of conflicts is composed going forward. And, in my mind, it helps fill a gap left by the peace process.
Dave: Oh, and what’s that?
Emily: Northern Ireland never had a Truth and Reconciliation commission where combatants could tell their stories and victims could receive some closure. In other post-conflict countries, like South Africa after apartheid, that was the foundation of a new society, of moving on and living with your former enemies.
Samantha Mathis inhabits the tough-talking Sonia with a buried secret and Hayden is Dave, a former British soldier seeking revenge. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
In the unenviable role of the soon-to-be-slain Bobby, Harrison Tipping makes the most of his brief stage time as the young soldier who follows his libido instead of his conscience. But there’s only so much one can do with a character who downs too many pints, falls for a pretty face, and winds up in a morgue before Act I ends. Doireann Mac Mahon and Annabelle Zasowski fare better as the IRA agents masquerading as pubgoers, skillfully luring both Bobby and young Dave into danger. Another standout is Samantha Mathis as Sonia, a tough-talking woman in her fifties with a buried secret. She doesn’t appear until Act II, but once onstage, her steely presence—and underlying vulnerability—command attention.
Charlie Corcoran’s spare set, lit with precision by Michael Gottlieb, smoothly carries the action between present-day exchanges and flashbacks to the 1970s. Less effective are the surreal entrances and exits of nameless soldiers during Emily and Dave’s conversations; presumably intended to evoke the atmosphere of wartime, they instead tip into melodrama. Director Matt Torney would do better to trust McGann’s script to speak for itself without the distraction of unnecessary stage business.
The Honey Trap may revisit a night of betrayal and loss, but McGann’s drama ultimately probes the lasting scars of conflict and the uneasy coexistence of memory and truth. With a strong ensemble and a script that refuses easy answers, this production offers audiences both a gripping story and a sobering reminder of how the past continues to shadow the present.
The Honey Trap plays through Nov. 9 at the Irish Repertory Theatre (132 W 22nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday. There will be no public performance on Sunday, Sept. 28. For tickets and more information, visit irishrep.org.
Playwright: Leo McGann
Director: Matt Torney
Scenic Design: Charlie Corcoran
Lighting Design: Michael Gottlieb
Costume Design: Sarita Fellows
Sound Design: James Garver
