What Do You Expect? – A very funny comedy

By the early noughties Ireland had undergone massive changes in a very short period of time. It was suddenly one of the richest countries in Europe and held up as a beacon of prosperity for all the world to admire. The indigenous population were challenged by inward migration; a certain shock to a country that only ever saw its people leave.

A compensation culture emerged where the stubbing of a toe could result in a ‘lucky’ financial windfall. Work and money were plentiful and the young people of Ireland reinvented themselves with a carefree urge to backpack in foreign lands while Mammy and Daddy happily footed the bill. On reflection you can see how materialism, over confidence and over consumption combined and spread like a virus; a virus that couldn’t possibly be sustained and would inevitably affect us all negatively.

May and Owen Ryan are a typical middle aged couple whose children are much better educated than they ever were and expect so much more from life. They live in a rural farming community. Owen, who is hard of hearing, gets hit by a car at work and although his injuries have largely cleared up, his compensation claim against the driver is still under investigation so he certainly can’t be seen to work. He has a field planted with potatoes that needs to be harvested. He decides to employ a foreign national to come as live in help for a few weeks. Meanwhile a young American called Luke decides to visit relations that he has never met in Ireland. Those relations just happen to be May and Owen’s nearest neighbours. Coming across the Ryan’s house first, Luke assumes they are his family. Owen Ryan assumes that Luke is the Armenian worker he has been expecting.

Such mistaken identity on both their parts leads to some hilarious exchanges set against a backdrop of this ‘new’ Ireland. What Do You Expect is a very funny romp that will highly entertain but also, perhaps, provoke an audience into realising that we all had a greedy hand in creating the problems Ireland faces today.