View from the Green Room: Dante's Circle of Hell
Playwright Jim Nolan and Four Rivers Theatre Company Director Ben Barnes
It was all aboard the cruise ship of conflict right from the off in the Four Rivers production of Jim Nolan’s new play “Castel Gandolfo”.
The maturity of Nolan’s writing is obvious in the way the audience is offered dramatic hooks from the opening lines… is she here yet?... why did Charley leave?... why has Tony been in the slammer?
And more as Tony chats with daughter Stella while he restores his father’s now vintage Austin, complete with its RAC badge — a metaphor for the healing of fractured familial relationships about to take place.
Everyday life in crumbling Castel Gandolfo is filled with tension. Things have gone wrong in complicated if logically constructed ways. One catastrophe lands on another, their combination leads to a third and drives the narrative on as secrets sliver out like temporary cane scaffolding.
The house is crumbling and the family is tearing itself apart. Stephen is dying… his car doesn’t work… student Stella has lost interest in her law degree… her boyfriend has gone home to New York… Tony’s sister Rose is losing her job… his brother Charley hasn’t shown up for 25 years. And now their mother Dolly, whose tight red dress screams against the grey drabness of the setting, is back - for her share of the will!
Carrie Crowley’s Dolly is magnificent as the in-yer-face mother from hell who thinks she’s on the acceptable side of cynical until events prove too much for her. You could cut the tension when she appears. Her apparent indifference to the plight of all those who share in the crumbling house’s misfortune will turn as events unfold.
When Charley shows up to take a wrecking ball to the happy-family pretence, the proverbial hits the fan as the unexploded mines of past history unfold with the bitterness of a sour lemon. Micheal Power’s presence as the belligerent Charley towers over the family’s pretence to reveal the guilt and horror of sexual abuse that has poisoned the family ever since. What happened… what might have happened… what failed to happen and what the consequences were all land like grenades at the family wake.
A desire to go places can be a driving force, but a determination to get away from this home’s circumstances becomes a jetpack for Charley and Dolly’s escape. Sadly, there is no escape from the guilt of what happened on those fateful nights.
Sarah Madigan’s excellent Rose carries the emotional shove of the drama, while Elishka Lane’s contrasting Stella brings energy and life to the grim storyline. There’s catharsis here. Fear and pain are experienced in order to understand them more fully; we understand the relief of experiencing them without having to experience them.
But there’s also closure and Garrett Lombard, who is excellent as Tony, the son who remains behind, tidies things up, restores order from the chaos of fractured lives and puts his father’s car back on the road.
Ben Barnes’ direction is wonderful – a drama of pace and character with tension at its soul.
One of Jim Nolan’s best — you just can’t beat good writing!
