The Good Luck ClubNational Archives of Ireland, Dublin★★★★☆The early years of the Irish Free State tend to conjure images of grim austerity and clerical domination. Anu’s latest theatrical foray into our nation’s past disrupts such perceptions of grey uniformity.Performed inside the National Archives, this promenade piece about the shady history of the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake features elaborately costumed dancers and oodles of international skulduggery. The Good Luck Club seems to offer a broadly faithful account of how the former Cumann na nGaedheal minister Joe McGrath and his cronies created the world’s largest lottery during the 1930s (pocketing millions in the process).But Louise Lowe, the production’s writer and director, and her company also dial up the spectacle and intrigue to craft an absorbing study of greed and politics that has the flavour of Cabaret by way of The Big Sleep.As ever with Anu, this excursion into a world of promotional razzmatazz and smuggled tickets involves up-close interactions with the nine-strong cast, who escort us through the archives’ stacks. Aided by Sinéad Wallace’s chiaroscuro lighting and Rob Moloney’s throbbing music (with sound design by Aidah Sama), that cavernous setting lends itself well to creating a faintly surreal, dreamlike atmosphere. We readily grasp the repeated point that the sweepstake runs on selling “hopes and dreams” to millions.The Good Luck Club: Oliver Flitcroft and Jack Hassett. Photograph: Patricio Cassinoni The Good Luck Club: Maeve Fitzgerald. Photograph: Patricio Cassinoni The Good Luck Club: Ciara Molloy, Maeve Fitzgerald, Pattie Maguire and Ghaliah Conroy. Photograph: Patricio Cassinoni The Good Luck Club: Oliver Flitcroft. Photograph: Patricio Cassinoni The Good Luck Club: Ghaliah Conroy. Photograph: Patricio Cassinoni The chief salesman here is the lottery’s cofounder Capt Spencer Freeman, played with louche flair by John Cronin, who directs a troupe of showgirls as they prepare to wheel in trolleys full of tickets at a prize draw. One has a model aeroplane fastened around her neck; another is dressed as a bird. We also witness a virtuoso riff on the Charleston, performed by Ghaliah Conroy.Amid bitter asides about the legacy of the Civil War (which Freeman, a former British officer, dismisses as a “civil dispute”), all this pageantry at once evokes escapist yearnings and the subordination of women in independent Ireland. Revolutionaries who had fought alongside their male comrades have been relegated to providing background colour as well as the administrative labour that keeps the sweepstake humming.Bucking that norm is Maeve Fitzgerald’s Dora Metcalf, a flinty mathematician enlisted by McGrath to bring greater precision and accuracy to his rapidly expanding operation. Her vintage Comptometer, a mechanical calculator, epitomises the attention to historical detail of Owen Boss’s design.Whereas Metcalf has previously worked for the British government, McGrath’s agent in the United States, Joseph McGarrity (Jamie O’Neill), remains an influential figure within the IRA. His involvement with the 1939-40 S-Plan bombing campaign in Britain becomes the focus of an extended sequence that emphasises the criminality underlying the sweepstake’s operations. Money here proves a solvent for most political differences (though Metcalf ultimately discovers some moral backbone).McGrath himself, as played by Oliver Flitcroft, is a study in ruthless, single-minded hustle. Whatever idealism led him to join the revolution has vanished, but he retains the habits of clandestinity that drive the success of his moblike business empire.Notwithstanding some on-the-nose dialogue, The Good Luck Club is another accomplished instalment in Anu’s ongoing project to resurrect the ghosts of Irish history.The Good Luck Club, staged by Anu, is at the National Archives of Ireland, Dublin, until Sunday, June 14th