THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
When I saw the original transfer of this from the Abbey in Dublin to the Royal Court in 1996 I was struck by its Gothic, brooding, quality. Revisiting it all these years later it appears very weak, despite the sterling efforts of director Carrie Cracknell and this excellent cast to resuscitate it.
Saturated in misery it is a two-hour dirge which never develops dramatically and so places an unsustainable burden on the lead actor, here Alison Oliver. Portia is a 30-year-old mother haunted by the death, fifteen years previously, of her twin brother, with whom she feels she had an almost mythic communion. He drowned in the Belmont River, a site that has since assumed a mystical reverence for her.
Portia has become a ghostly figure, who gets through the day in an alcoholic stupor spewing invective at her affluent but hapless and meek factory-owner husband Raphael (Olivier winner Chris Walley) and expressing disinterest in her children whom she can’t trust herself to care for. It’s a powerful portrait of deep clinical depression, and at times moving, but the character is so unrelenting she is difficult to care about. It’s an odd play where the central protagonist kills herself before the end of act one and there is a sense of relief in the audience. But don’t worry, she’s back in Act 2 in extended flashbacks.
Her abuse is general, and she heaps scorn on everyone around her with a string of richly adorned curses and poetic ramblings. Dressed in denim cutaway shorts and boots she flees the comfortable married home which she detests, for seedy assignations in the nearby woods, where grubby lads from the village - the barman of the perfectly named High Chaparral, a wastrel pal from her youth - have their way with her, or don’t.
The oppressive claustrophobia of Irish small-town life and how it often masked abuse and incest is very well observed by Carr. She’s great on class and tribe and ties of blood. Your family origins here determined your life path and so the commonest insults were ‘tinker’ or ‘blow-in’. It’s set in that period when the Celtic Tiger was taking off and there are, of course, digs at the vulgar nouveau riche.
Director Cracknell is great in evoking mood and atmosphere. A key theme for Carr is how landscape imposes itself on the individual, especially in this bleak, boggy, Irish midlands setting, and Alex Eales’ excellent design manifests this metaphor. His set presents the dark rocky riverbank through an exploded wall in the Coughlan’s living room, nature being ever present. The village bar too with its Country & Western vibe is also neatly perfect.
An ensemble cast of mostly Irish actors are top class and make it all fly. Sorcha Cusack is a total horror as a foul-mouthed wheelchair-bound grandmother and Kathy Keira Clarke is wonderful too as a cheerful chain-smoking ex sex worker who is now kept by a devoted dullard of a husband.
One inspired idea of Cracknell’s was to engage the composer/singer Maimuna Memon (so great in the NT’s Standing at Sky’s Edge which is about to transfer) to create the musical landscape of the piece. She has composed a song cycle which is performed with exquisite soulfulness by Archee Aitch Wylie, who hovers as the eerie ghost of Gabriel, envisioned here as a ‘changeling’. It’s a masterstroke and exemplifies how well served the play is here.
