The Pleasureometer by Jack Harte
When the Covid Lockdown closed the theatres of Ireland, the New Theatre in Temple Bar commissioned a series of 15-minute plays to be streamed live within the strictures of the Covid Guidelines as a festival called Acts of Defiance. Jack Harte’s play The Pleasureometer was one of them.
Watch the play via facebook here
The Shutdown has closed the Pub. A group of habitual patrons may never meet again. Their relationship was dependent totally on the Pub. So close were they and so regular that other patrons dubbed them The Club. The Narrator, one of the group, describes the relatively mundane evenings that were galvanised by the visits of Himself, a larger-than-life figure who comes always with some new idea about which he is passionate. The closing of the Pub interrupts a scientific experiment. Himself has invented a gadget for testing a student’s response to Poetry, solving the problem that students who garner high marks in exams often hate the poems they are studying. The gadget can enable isolated testing too. The experiment appears to be working, but the Narrator has an insight into its success, which he withholds in order to enjoy the comic outcome on another night. But the Shutdown now means there may never be another night or a comic outcome.
From Emer O’Kelly’s review in the Sunday Independent:
Acts of defiance: the theatre fights back
The most successful of this week's three is The Pleasureometer, which incorporates the spirit of fighting back: it has charm, a gleefully light touch and a healthy degree of cynicism. Written by Jack Harte, it was played by Gerard Lee as a garrulous pub devotee, now in lockdown, who designates his erstwhile fellow regulars by type: the poet, the writer, the teacher, the cynic, the young fella and Himself.
He recalls a discussion on why Shamrock Rovers should be banned and degenerates into debating the possibility of "you're a wanker" being designated an offence against sexuality. Then we hit the possibility of scientifically measuring the pleasures of poetry, and end up on a discussion of a "young one" on a bar stool flashing her knickers.
An absolute delight. It raises the spirits in a time of Covid-19.
Some other reviews: 
