The Right Aptitude – A Short Play

John and Nicky are both middle aged, but polar opposites. John is calm, confident, owns his own business and his own home and would be considered a success in Irish society. Nicky, on the other hand, lives in a council house, has spent most of his life on social welfare and is currently on a FAS course learning yet another skill that he thoroughly dislikes.

He is edgy and relatively aggressive in his manner and masks his years of repressed anger with sarcasm.

John recognises that Nicky’s problem is not laziness or lack of ability but he is simply a person who has never been given the opportunity to explore their own talents and abilities. In John’s eyes Nicky is just a square peg in a round hole. John opens up the world of gardening to Nicky, encourages him and finds, to his amazement, the gentler soul within. However in making Nicky his project, John exposes himself to the inadequacies and frustrating methods of the Irish civil service and the ridiculous way the welfare system operates. By the end of the play Nicky has definitely been transformed into a calm, confident and happy individual while John’s personality also undergoes a gradual transformation.

This is a very interesting piece where the concepts of experience shaping your world and nature versus nurture are explored in a light hearted and comedic fashion.