View from the Green Room: Fractured families
Turnaround Theatre brought fine acting to Upstairs at Phil Grimes Pub.
This may be theatre on a shoestring but there’s nothing rough and ready about tonight’s production of three short plays from Turnaround Theatre. This production is snappy and polished with three interesting and radically different scripts that play to a full and clued-in mini theatre on the top floor of Philly Grimes’ pub.
The theme of unhappy families connects the opening two dramas. Tolstoy’s comment that "every family has its secret and its secret is that it is not like other families" couldn’t be more appropriate. Each short drama plays out conflicts that are never really going to be resolved because no party can simply walk away from the issues that cause the family to fracture.
Deirdre Kinahan’s ‘Hue and Cry’ brings two Dublin cousins – Damian (Patrick Hennigan) and Kevin (Brendan Ahearne) – together for the family funeral of Damian’s Da where past histories are dumped on the floor like Monday’s washing.
The dialogue between both cousins, who are polar opposites, sparkles as the drink flows and confessions are aired. Damian’s half-cut, unshaven appearance says it all about his character. His face carried the weariness of a man who has seen one dawn too many.
Broke and searching for coins behind the sofa’s cushions as he stuffs naggins of Paddy into his pocket, Damian is angry at his "stepmother bitch" that had him thrown out of his own house and kept his father’s death a secret from him.
Effete choreographer cousin Kevin is left to placate him and to make sure he doesn’t turn up at his funeral. It’s not an easy gig.
Damian has a history of drug and alcohol abuse and has spent significant time in the ‘Joy'. Kevin’s journey has been a lot more comfortable. An only child, he has inherited an expensive house and lives off his earnings as a choreographer.
Strangely, dance unites the pair with the underlying truth that artistic performance heals the soul. When both cousins dance the drama moves into the realm of the absurd and comedy flows naturally as it always does with absurdist drama.
Director Helena Walsh Kiely brings excellent performances from both Patrick Hennigan and Brendan Ahearne and maintains the audience’s focus on the storyline.
Helena also directs Baby Steps by Sarah Fahy and Moira Mahony. Despite the prop of a large cot, cast of five, demanding script and a tiny stage, the ensemble combines to make it all work. Ash (Robyn Forristal) and Chris (Steven Walsh) seek to rescue their floundering marriage by relocating from Galway to Oxford to escape the smothering small-town pressure to produce a baby in their first year of marriage.
A Greek chorus of Taryn Nolan Lawlor, Evan Sinnott and Alicia Ryan fill us in on the journey of their relationship from courtship to marriage.
Unfortunately, this pair is locked into a relationship so tight that it has no place to go but around in cramped circles. They’ve even got a make-shift pregnancy pillow to justify the purchase of an IKEA cot for the ‘new baby’.
The crucifying instructions for the cot’s assembly, that Chris believes only a degree in woodwork would solve, becomes a metaphor for the reconstruction of a marriage that has been fissured by Chris’s betrayal. Facts ripple out in Ash’s stream of accusations and attempts by Chris to move on from his single night of passion and betrayal prove as difficult and as contentious as the cot’s assembly.
Still…the cot is assembled and we’re left with the hope that a baby may not be too far away and that the marriage might move into the happy-ever-after phase. Mmmm?
Producer/Director Helena Walsh Kiely performs a Fishamble's Tiny Play by Dermot Bolger around the Baby Steps characters that remained onstage in a sort of ‘our revels now are ended’ epilogue. The baffling script wandered and pondered around the meaning of theatre and the significance of performance vs reality.
Playwrights should always be discouraged from writing plays about the significance of writing plays because they forget that the audience is listening and watching a performance and not studying a written script. Still, Helena works wonders with the long-winded monologue.
I’m delighted at the introduction to Waterford of a new theatre company. Fine actors, imaginative directors and a drive to make a mark in Waterford theatre marks Turnaround Theatre’s production arrival on the theatre scene and I look forward to seeing more of its work.
