Mea Culpa: A breath of fresh air in Waterford
Mea Culpa was written by Nicola Spendlove and Gayle Corrigan. The play was directed by Jim Nolan.
“You have no idea what my life has been like”, Clara/Érin (played by Nicola Spendlove) tells her birth parents at the end of Mea Culpa, a new radio play recently aired on WLRfm.
The essence of the show is contained in those ten words. Ostensibly, it is about a woman finding out who her birth parents are, but it's soon clear that it is about so much more. It’s about the power self-perception has on identity, it's about the hidden cost of wealth and respect in a small community, it’s about how we write our history, what we choose to include…and omit.
The play opens on an uncertain note. I wasn’t sure if the tone being struck was sincere or ironic. Spendlove’s opening monologue and conversation with her friend felt somewhat stilted. Granted, trying to convey the online world over the radio is difficult, and they have some clever workarounds.
The play really gets going once Cara meets her birth mother at a funeral. When we first meet Elizabeth (played by Greta Rochford) she is cold and snobbish, convinced that her long-lost daughter has come out of the woodwork to take advantage of the inheritance. Clara is crushed, she dreamed that her mother was a glamorous West End star, turns out she’s a manager in Tesco’s with notions.
The first half act of the play is a cautionary tale about an overactive imagination. She tells the audience: “I’d imagined so many versions of that moment.” You can feel Cara’s desperation for something tangible, but what that is exactly, it’s clear she has no idea.
The second act begins with a monologue from Cara’s birth father, Michael (played by the enigmatic Michael Power).
Writers Nicola Spendlove and Gayle Corrigan put the audience in Cara’s shoes. We are dying to find out what happened but Elizabeth frustratingly keeps us at arm’s length. The pacing is perfect, and the wait pays off. Michael delivers a wry tribute to the foolishness of youth and the restrictions of class.
But there are three sides to every story, and that's what Mea Culpa is all about.
Where Michael presents a romantic view of young love and heartbreak, Elizabeth pulls us back to the reality of Ireland in the past and the lack of choices afforded to women, no matter their financial circumstances.
The play mimics the cadence of life well.
Amid an identity crisis, Cara finds her long-lost relative on RIP.ie Michael sums up Cara’s health problems when he bluntly says, “So you’re stuck for a kidney are ya?” We find out that he has a week booked off work so he can see the Cheltenham horse racing…in Ballybricken.
No matter the intensity of the situation, Elizabeth manages to work her in her posh Eircode and the expensive restaurants she’s eaten at into the conversation.
Life is messy, and things are often as funny as they are disappointing. The play is generous with its characters, allowing them to be flawed, to be wrong, but ultimately deserving of love and redemption.
It ends, as all family dramas should end, with a Chinese takeaway.
