THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
In Ireland, a country known for its loquaciousness, the solo theatrical monologue has a noble tradition, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and Conor McPherson being exemplars. As a format it can be deceptively tricky however as it puts all the focus on the actor, who has to be able to hold an audience rapt while delineating different characters in just, say, 75 minutes, as here. At its poorest, because there is no ‘action’, it can indulge dramatists’ worst weaknesses for fine phrases and purple prose. This powerful and evocative contemporary Irish country tale doesn’t really escape those shortcomings.
Áine Ryan’s character Kitty waits alone in her kitchen, her father dying in the next room and wishing he’d hurry up, so that her boyfriend Robert can accompany her to the local beauty pageant, something she’s competitively wrapped up in with her oddly named best friend, Silesia, who has ‘X Factor’ like ambitions.
Ryan is a spikily expressive performer and here she too often lurches with a crooked back and extended arms in an affected style and intones the dialogue as if she’s doing early Synge, but at the Abbey Theatre c. 1940. It’s a style that Martin McDonagh regularly lampoons but for him it’s a starting off point and it is done with a wink. There is no such modern subtext here.
It’s in your face and presents a version of Irishness (if it is attempting to be modern) which is totally unrecognizable to this writer, born and bred on a mountain farm in the west of Ireland. There are details which are (perhaps unintentionally), way off. I’ve never seen a decanter (for whisky!) on an Irish country kitchen table, for example, or indeed experienced her woes with mobile phone signals. In reality, rural Ireland has better signals than central London. This may be pedantic for a piece which reaches for the poetic, but in a drama it is ultimately distancing and adds to an inauthenticity makes you lose interest. We never really understand this rural family’s status either. One minute it presents an impression of living almost in squalor (has she met recent Irish farmers?!), the next she’s buying haute couture from Milan by mail order, which bizarrely is a key plot point.
Kitty’s language is wonderfully vivid, but the florid descriptions often distract, at crucial moments, from key plot points, and there are a lot of those.
Towards the end, the plot makes a sharp handbrake turn involving her sexual assault by a Garda and from then on we’re in a world of Grand Guignol or a slasher movie.
Jack Reardon’s direction is taut throughout however and Florence Hand’s sound design deftly evokes the altering moods of the piece. The production oozes with commitment and energy but the script could do with the hand of a dramaturg.
The Jack Studio, part of a famous old pub Brockley Jack, continues to stage interesting work and be a testing ground for new writing. It is always one to watch.
