THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By David Ireland
Riverside Studios, 101 Queen Caroline St, London W6 9BN, until January 28, 2024
David Ireland’s last London splash, the black comedy Cyprus Avenue at the Royal Court, had Stephen Rea playing a hardline Unionist who to his horror couldn’t stop seeing Gerry Adams in the face of his newborn granddaughter, so Ireland is no stranger to stirring it up.
He’s doing it again here but this time his target is big dumb American movie stars trying to “do” Irish nationalism, in this case in a new play in London by an Irish writer. He’s aided by a patronizing, clueless, English director while the author, a staunchly proud Ulster Unionist, valiantly tries to protect her work from these idiots.
OK, Ireland’s got an axe to grind about people who know very little wading in, but whereas the former play managed, for the most part, to balance the humor with the horror this one just sets up a lot of strawmen arguments which then get laboriously dismantled at a mostly glacial pace. The last ten minutes provide a major change of gear though, when there’s more action than in a Keystone Cops movie and about the same quotient of subtlety.
It’s the day before rehearsals begin and we’re in the home of a renowned theater director Leigh (Andy Serkis), who is obsequiously pandering to the whims of the newly arrived movie star Jay (Woody Harrelson). They bat the breeze with chit chat which descends into a rather unsavory hypothetical argument about rape (which has major repercussions later) until the arrival of the young playwright Ruth. Louise Harland injects much needed vivacity and normalcy here as the commanding young woman, who soon becomes Jay’s nemesis and who can run rings round these two with her eyes closed.
Dressed in his Californian meditation garb and forever crouching Harrelson displays, as the movie star, all the charisma and pitch perfect comic timing you’d expect. He has the narcissism and self-absorption down perfectly, but you do wonder what attracted him to this this rather cardboard “stupid American” role.
Serkis is great too, drowning in his therapy speak when he isn’t mouthing pompous platitudes about art (“The human race depends on us”) or about social justice or identity politics. His cluelessness about Northern Ireland (insisting Ruth is Irish and not British) stretches credibility for one who is supposed to stage lots of Irish drama.
Ireland touches on themes of power dynamics among creatives, cultural identity and the perils of being a woman in the entertainment industry, but it’s all far too broad brush and it’s difficult to see who he is writing for.
There are some wonderful passages of invective from Leigh, as the veil of his political correctness slips once he’s challenged. The two flounce around Max Jones’ excellently naturalistic set and Jeremy Herrin directs the physical confrontations with great panache.
The actors here are so good they can wring every piece of irony from the dialogue, but the piece outstays its welcome until the rumbustious finale.
