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In John B Keane’s The Matchmaker, set in the parochial town of Spider’s Well, a farmer named Dick Mick Dicky O’Connor (played by Jon Kenny) decides to turn his hand to the surprisingly lucrative craft of matchmaking to subsidise himself after a particularly poor harvest. His wife is ill, he is aging, and the outlook is bleak. But Dick is a stoic and an optimist and, appropriately, he happens to know the people of his parish particularly well. We learn all this in the opening scene as he writes to his sister, Marge (played by Mary McEvoy), who now lives just across the ocean in Philadelphia. Dick makes all matrimonial, as well as personal, arrangements through his letters so The Matchmaker is an almost entirely epistolary play. It tracks Dick’s successes and failures as he tries to match up various members of the parish community, all of whom are absurdly demanding and capricious. Be they male, female, virile, frigid, solvent, penniless, middle-aged, elderly, widowed, or homosexual, they are all very lonely, and very anxious to get laid.

Jon Kenny and Mary McEvoy, who play all the characters, seem to have as much fun as the audience while they harness the comic potential of each situation. With a shake of her hips, McEvoy turns innocent lines into the crudest euphemisms, while Kenny’s eyes pop and dart out of his plastic face as his characters explain their predicaments or joys to the sagacious and patient Dick O’Connor. Michael Scott, who directed this performance, wisely decided that a simple set and minimal movement around the stage would allow these two comic actors to make the most of their considerable experience and talent. Above all else, it is their incredible energy and skill that sustains what can sometimes feel like a series of farmhouse-themed euphemisms and relentlessly racy punch lines. The jokes are funny, but the actors are funnier. In fact, many members of the audience couldn’t help but applaud them mid-performance and the entire house gave a standing ovation at the end. You’re not likely to see The Matchmaker performed any better than this.

The Matchmaker runs at the Gaiety Theatre until 14 November. Tickets start at €25.