A storm. A hotel with no way out. And a guest list of the rich, the famous and the very badly behaved, every one of them invited by a host who knows exactly what they've done.

The guests arrive at Hotel Rapscallion on the worst night of the year, every one of their cars broken down on the same stretch of road. A movie star and her fiancé, with her bodyguard never far from her side. Three military officers who will talk about anything at all except the Andes. An industrialist with strong opinions about unions, and the son who has to stand there while he shares them. The world's first quadrillionaire, arriving by helicopter. And a butler, a groundskeeper and a cook, who have between them heard every word these people have ever said.

Their host is a magician, and has worn a great many other hats besides. He is also, so far, late.

But there is a second play going on, and it keeps interrupting the first. Again and again the murder mystery grinds to a halt and the young company performing it spill out of it to argue about costumes that don't fit, lights that are far too bright, who is actually learning their lines, and the small matter of the writers not having handed over the ending. Opening night is four days away. Then three.

The two halves rhyme. The play inside is about powerful people discovering that consequences might apply to them after all. The rehearsal room is a group of teenagers arguing about whether that is how the real world works at all — a question one of them asks, quietly and seriously, near the end, and nobody can answer.

Revenge at Hotel Rapscallion was a premiere by Mary O'Donoghue, directed by Liam Meagher and performed by the Waterford Youth Arts Summer Project company, aged 15 to 19. Very silly, very fast, and rather more moving than it lets on.