Ulster AmericanAbbey Theatre, Dublin★★★☆☆This play by David Ireland stars Matthew Broderick as a knowing caricature of himself. The Irish-American star plays an Irish-American star, named Jay Conway, who is set to feature in a play about Ireland. Thanks to Jay’s celebrity, the entire run is already sold out (as is true of Ulster American, which comes to the Abbey from New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre). So far, so meta.Unlike Broderick, Jay boasts an Oscar (which will acquire Chekhov’s gun-like properties). Despite his avowed pride in his Irish heritage, Jay has also never been to Ireland (whereas Broderick is a regular visitor). That ignorance will prove to be more than just a theatrical handicap. The action opens in the London home of the play’s director, Lee Carver, who nods along as Jay laments the grip of racism, homophobia and misogyny over Hollywood. As a fellow ageing white man, Max Baker’s Lee is eager to convey that he shares Jay’s concern for “learning to shut the f**k up”. Neither will of course do anything of the kind. And performative wokeness abruptly yields to a discussion of rape fantasies (in the spirit of “if you really had to”).That sinister thought experiment is interrupted by the arrival of the playwright, Ruth Davenport. Jay still struggles to keep his off-colour remarks in check. But mutual flattery and excited talk of Broadway initially grease the conversational wheels until Jay blurts out that he’s never heard of Ulster. Lee compounds the insult by insisting that Geraldine Hughes’s Ruth, a Belfast protestant, is Irish and not British. Actor and director have somehow contrived to overlook the fact that Ruth’s script is an apologia for loyalism, written by a woman with “complicated feelings” about the UVF.What they were expecting – and now demand – is a more familiar take on the struggle for “Irish freedom”, or even a “universal” story that has nothing to do with Northern Ireland. Ruth’s outrage is further inflamed by Jay’s risible attempts at an Ulster accent, which makes him sound, in the play’s most memorable line, like a “Belfast Dick Van Dyke”.Under Ciarán O’Reilly’s direction, this dialogue of the deaf unfolds in knockabout style for 80 minutes, culminating in a splendidly lurid finale.Despite its structural cohesion and comic energy, Ulster American suffers from some weaknesses in characterisation. Though played with expert timing by Broderick, Jay never moves beyond obnoxious vanity. Lee seems too clueless and lacking in guile to be the artistic director of a major theatre. His muddled politics also strain credulity. Early on, he credits Princess Diana’s death with helping the British to open up emotionally; later, he approvingly quotes Stalin’s line about writers being “engineers of the human soul”.[ Matthew Broderick: I hate critics – but sometimes I respect them, particularly when they like meOpens in new window ]Only Ruth comes across as a fully rounded creation. Though a Tory-voting Brexiteer, she proves adept at exploiting progressive cancel culture. First staged in 2018, Ulster American also seems slightly dated. Virtue-signalling hypocrisy was always an easy target. Now that “Woke 1.0” is apparently behind us, the theatre should probably move on.Ulster American is at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, until Saturday, August 22nd