He is very close to his mother and is the church choirmaster

He is very close to his mother, and is the church choirmaster. Forty years ago, none of this, apparently, rang any particular bells in South York-shire, which was good for someone who wanted to be discreet about his homosexuality. But Phil’s life isn’t worth living, literally, when the locals finally twig.Bant’s wife of 18 years has walked out, intensifying his tendency to meet every challenge with a threat of violence. Walter, a widower, has sent his daughters to their aunts, his son to a children’s home, and sleeps with a woman who wants him to forget about them “The awful thing is… I find I can do it.” Jack, the gentlest and kindest among them, breaks his wife’s heart by falling for the doctor’s daughter; and Scobie has a depressed wife and a stroppy, rock’n'roll-mad teenage daughter. One of the others suggests she might have been brainwashed by a foreign power – Radio Luxembourg.The characters are more emotionally articulate and self-aware than one would expect from such men, and three rather trite monologues by Colin remind us that The Glee Club belongs in another overworked category, the coming-of-age play.

But the story (almost all of it happening off-stage) is deftly conveyed, in pungent, inventively profane language, and the writing maintains a nicely shifting tension between the men’s virtues and desires, between their friendship and their individuality. Despite its milieu, the play blames no women, only men and their fathers. The musical numbers, staged by Mia Soteriou, are wonderful, especially the novelty numbers about funny foreigners in Mexico or Constantinople.The actors in Mike Bradwell’s punchy production all give realistic and juicy performances – or, in the case of David Bamber’s Phil, “shrivelled”. Shaun Prendergast might bring out more of the bullying that lies behind Scobie’s heartiness, but David Schofield’s Bant is a splendid combination of harsh loyalty and self-crucifying romanticism. If you can’t get into The Full Monty, you won’t leave The Glee Club feeling you settled for second-best.To 30 March (020-7610 4224). Sebastian Barry made his reputation with the excellent Steward of Christendom, about Thomas Dunne, a former chief superintendent of Dublin Metropolitan Police, wrestling with himself and with history in a home for the elderly. Barry’s new play, in Max Stafford-Clark’s brave Out of Joint production, appears to up the ante.

Dunne was a father, and Steward certainly teased out all the affinities with Lear in his situation, but he was not the Father of the Nation. Under police protection in his Dublin mansion, he awaits the verdict of a tribunal on his nest-feathering corruption during his political heyday in the Seventies and Eighties He is also awaiting a verdict on the state of his health. His family – his distressed, estranged wife (Dearbhla Molloy) to whom he was repeatedly unfaithful, and depressed suicidal son (Phelim Drew) – are not glowing testimony to his patriarchal gifts.At Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, the show caused a scandal as it was interpreted as a documentary drama about Charles Haughey At the National, the the piece imparts a different shock You boggle at how it fails to deliver on any front. It’s a glorified promissory note; “fine writing” in desperate need of a stronger dramatic mechanism. I have no doubt that, in time, Stafford-Clark will be seen as the greatest, most influential director of new writing in post-Sixties English theatre, but not even his very imaginative varying of mood here can breathe life into Hinterland.The questions it raises are potentially fascinating.