I think I might be happy if I wasn't out with them...

You know what? This really is the festival that keeps on giving. Certainly when it comes to providing starting points for conversation, drink-fuelled or otherwise.

Take, for instance, last night’s show: Happy Hour. Now, I’m going to get to the piece itself in a matter of moments, so bear with me. But just to say that the one thing, at least, it has the power to reminds us of is that, when it comes to drink culture, precious little stands to distinguish we Irish from any of the ‘home nations’ across the water. I mean, we might as well rebrand ourselves John Bull’s Other Local.

Now, sure, I could carry on from there. I could really let this rip. I could roar and rant about identity politics, the failure to decolonise and the inherent contradiction in fostering notions of shared nationhood around a substance that actually corrodes a sense of selfhood.

But I’m not. Because neither you nor I would find that enjoyable. And that’s kind of the point, see? Because if there’s one thing Happy Hour is, it’s enjoyable.

Performed and written by Wendy Houstoun (with additional material by Tim Etchells), this is one of the finest and funniest amalgams of text and movement I’ve seen in some time. Houstoun - as a barmaid on the bender of a lifetime, in a life lived in a world on the batter, in some country on the lash, in some town on a perpetual razz - displays superb comic timing, delivering lines and movement with equal skill.

The work’s deeper power, to my mind, lies in the tension between the clichéd, involuntary phrases that flood from her mouth and the involuntary, repetitive movements that flow from her body. As if some unconscious instinct for a life or a purpose keeps pushing up, desperate to break free of the intoxication of the habitual, yet never succeeding. Cumulatively, Houstoun’s exaggerated and directionless action in both word and gesture conveys acutely the sense of a life lived floundering, and of a society foundering. It’s also notable that this sense is right there, right from the start. It’s present in the habitual utterances we all know, the questions we've asked and answered for ourselves, the ones with which the performance begins – So. What can I give you? The usual? You need something to raise your spirits….

Certainly, as the piece unfolds and she becomes increasingly inebriated, incoherent and unrestrained, the sense of the individual comes more to the fore, yet that wider, cultural significance never quite departs the stage. She comes to embody every person. Everyman and everywoman. Certainly anyone who’s ever ended up at the wrong end of a liquor bottle.

And perhaps that’s what made it both comforting and uncanny a piece – the knowing laughter as, standing or sitting, we watched our least noble, most pathetic selves here, in this space. It made me think of those drunken, furious arguments over nothing…admit it, you know the ones. Especially the ones other people happen to have when for once you’re sober and in the vicinity. Now, yeah, sure - hilarious…and yet…you can’t let yourself laugh too hard.

Christ, no. Because, Jesus, didn’t the same thing happen me, or near enough? And mightn’t I be tempting fate for the next time I’m out with the lads or herself? And Christ, you should see me when I try to dance. Or stand even, sometimes. But we were happy. And it was good craic, wasn't it? And we had a good laugh, didn’t we?

Didn’t we?

Final word? Go see it. Last orders here.