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The Honey Trap
All goes well for two off-duty British soldiers as they enjoy drinks in a Unionist pub in 1979 Northern Ireland. When they meet up with two young women interested in a night of fun, the jokes and drinks move at a clip. Then everything goes sideways. How the consequences of the evening are finally resolved decades later, spins the drama and tension in Leo McGann’s The Honey Trap, currently at Irish Rep until February 15, 2026.
Directed by Matt Torney, the brilliantly acted, dynamic thriller merges the past – the time of the Troubles in Northern Ireland – and the present, decades later. In the present, Emily (Rebecca Ballinger), an Irish-American Ph.D. researcher, is studying the Troubles for an oral history project. She conducts interviews and gathers eyewitness accounts for her thesis.
Truth and the IRA
During the interviews we meet Dave (Michael Hayden), a former British soldier now in middle age, who believes his perspective is more truthful than those of former IRA soldiers. Emily tells him she must remain objective and suggests that what happened filters differently through the viewpoints of the various individuals’ experiences.
Dave rejects her opinion and suggests that “his” truth is absolute. Because he is the only former British soldier she has interviewed, Emily accepts his testimony and tells him she will not be judgmental.
As the play develops we note how both Emily and Dave negate their former proclamations to each other. By the end of the play Dave’s truth shatters.
Flashbacks to Belfast, 1979
The scene shifts from the interview to the past and a pub near the British soldiers’ barracks on the outskirts of Belfast. Twenty-something Dave (Daniel Marconi) has been at this particular pub a number of times. When he invites his friend Bobby for drinks, he hopes that a night out will diffuse the angst that Bobby feels about their miserable job. After standing for hours with riot shields at the ready to ward off bricks, bottles, dead animals, and feces, they both need to forget the insults and abuse by locals who hate them and want them gone.
In another flashback we see that the 21-year-old Bobby feels lost in his role. He is a peacekeeper charged with preventing the sectarian violence of neighbors burning each others’ homes and killing one another. Marconi’s Dave, whose experience and knowledge Bobby trusts, schools the lonely husband, who misses his wife and children. Both married men (Dave is older by a few years) have signed up because they need jobs. They didn’t expect the hell that they get as peacekeepers.
The Trap
The event over which Dave torments himself involves unknowingly taking the naive Bobby into a “honey trap.” The IRA stages Lisa (Annabelle Zasowski) and Kirsty (Doireann Mac Mahon) as seducers who will lure the men to another location for sex. There, the IRA will kill them. A last-minute call with his wife saves Dave from going with Bobby to his death.
Subtly, McGann switches the tone, sets up an unexpected dynamic, and exposes Dave’s ulterior motives in helping Emily with her research. The twist comes at the end of Act I when we understand a deepening of Dave’s complex character, beyond his charm and affability. His actions disclose his inability to reconcile himself with the event he feels he should have prevented – leading his friend to his death because of his carelessness. He affirms this fact later from Sonia (Samantha Mathis), the proprietor of a coffee shop in Belfast.
Dave’s Plan
Unbeknownst to the audience initially, Dave plots to make up for his self-betrayal and betrayal of Bobby by using Emily to get information. With it he will secure justice with his own honey trap and subsequent killing of Bobby’s murderers. Only then will the Bobby of his imagination and his own self-loathing be laid to rest.
Emily unknowingly leads him to the first part of his revenge, learning the identity of the killers. The mystery and suspense of the second act focus on the only perpetrator still alive, and how Dave traps them and makes them pay for Bobby’s murder.
Staging the flashbacks and flashforwards with precision, director Matt Torney distinguishes past from present, yet cleverly indicates that each informs the other in Dave’s tormented mind. Charlie Corcoran (scenic design), Sarita Fellows (costumes), Tommy Kurzman (wig and hair design) and Michael Gottlieb (lighting) aptly aid Torney’s vision as the events of the fateful evening when Bobby dies in the honey trap unfold. With stylization and striking simplicity in Act 2, Torney weaves together Dave’s memories of that night with his active plan of vengeance in the present, augmenting the suspense with the continuation of violence decades later.
McGann’s complex and profound play reveals the heartbreaking issues of that time, which may never be reconciled. Importantly, this terrific production illuminates three sides of the complex equation (the British soldiers, the divided locals, the IRA) and leaves no certain answers or final truths.
The Honey Trap runs through February 15, 2026 at Irish Repertory Theater in NYC.
