View from the Green Room: Normalising the abnormal
Lily (Jenny Fennessy) and Tom (Dylan Kennedy) in Taboo, performed at Theatre Royal.
Lily (Jenny Fennessy) is an odd sod. A twenty-somethin’ who’s only left the house twice in the last 20 years or so. It’s the germs, you see. Or so her recently-deceased infection-obsessed mother told her… "they’re everywhere, Lily… stay away from the outside… keep them out”.
Her mother was a teacher so home-schooling wasn’t an issue and the fabulous house boasts of past times when money was once easily found.
There’s a fabulous set that hints at middle-class affluence. From an original design by James Ahern and borrowed from Brideview Drama in Tallow, the set was constructed by Theatre Royal’s stage manager Dermot Quinn alongside Jenny’s parents Donal and Mary and brother Kieran Fennessy.
But things have changed now. There’s no food in the house. And little money in her mother’s tea box on top of the press. Lily has no option but to brave the outside world and head to the small town’s supermarket for food. And that’s where Tom (Dylan Kennedy) comes in.
Tom works in the small town supermarket where Lily has come to shop. Lost and bewildered in the aisles, Tom comes to her rescue. Her knight in shining nameplate. He’s helpful and friendly and… well… you can guess the rest. Or can you? Could anybody, in fact?
Lily invites Tom to her house for dinner where her behaviour would appear bizarre in a circus. She rehearses a planned conversation with Tom as she sprays air-freshener everywhere. A face to meet faces that she meets. A role-play within a role-play, if you like, because she’s got a checklist on her rules of engagement.
Tom compliments Lily on all her travels because odd pics of Lily dress the walls. Lily and the Eiffel Tower… Lily and the Coliseum… Lily and the Pyramids.
She explains that she has never been actually out of the house but her photographer father superimposed her on the scenes… ”sure it’s as good as actually being there… cuts out all the hassle of airports and passports and odd food…”
Her happy-snappy-pics Dad has also got an interesting sideline in risqué pics in sepia with Lily in them for a special friend of discretion who’s a regular to their house. Hmmm.
No school socialising, no school friends, no college. Just nothing. The habits of a lifetime betray her because the first thing she says to Tom is to wipe his shoes and then to “take them off, in fact, because her mother always told her that they bring germs in”.
Tom notices the smell because the stench is everywhere. He needs to use the bathroom but she won’t allow him into it. The audience smell a rat or two and begins to comment because the acting between this pair in this living room is atomic. And they’re all on Tom’s side… ”get out while you can, Tom… don’t go in there, Tom… OMG!!!”
Tom’s got his demons too. Their histories are dumped on the floor of the Theatre Royal like Monday’s washing. He’s not from Lily’s town and likes the fact that no one knows his past – although he’s terrified of disclosure. A relationship with a younger girl… very young… ”only two years between us ye know… it lasted… but she was definitely underage when… well… you know, like…”
Along the way, the niceties of dating and the dance of romance are forensically examined although “do ye come here often” is not mentioned on Lily’s menu of leak and potato soup, chicken pie, rhubarb tart.
The linear plotline of boy meets girl and get to know each other plays out against a background of a real inner world of horror. Questions like your favourite colour, band, food, film and pet playfully dance around the dinner table until the social niceties of romantic interplay exit stage left.
Questions of what is and what isn’t normal arise… ”This is normal for me, Tom… the outside world isn’t… your relationship with this young girl was normal for you whatever the outside world says… we could be happy here together… you and I… sit down and eat your rhubarb.”
John Morton’s “Taboo” is fundamentally a play about loneliness. Real loneliness. A couple who is lonely-and-isolated, lonely-and-excluded, lonely-and-incompatible, lonely-without-hope. The hyphenated lonely.
But Morton’s “Taboo” is also a comedy of manners that delights with all forms of humour.
Directors Dylan Kennedy and Shane Dempsey’s tempo throughout drives the Morton script forward. The play never stands still for a second.
Something bizarre is always happening as the narrative sweeps along. Shane and Dylan use every form of comic invention while still managing to turn the emotion of the piece on its head. Subtle wordplay, comic glances, physical and knockabout fun and the laughter that comes with the blackest of black and bleak comedy.
Yet again, Dylan Kennedy and Jenny Fennessy sparkle as the sometime-warring couple who come to know each other and themselves on a journey of discovery. Dylan’s Tom is tormented, questioning and restrained until he explodes into life as events reveal past events in Lily’s story. Jenny’s sometime manic, usually laid back and abnormally normal Lily has the audience in the palm of her hand all night. Both performances are a joy and the triumph of the drama is that we find ourselves in sympathy with two young people who have a lot to answer for.
Red n’ Blue Theatre’s “Taboo” has more twists than a corkscrew and fully deserved the sustained standing ovation from the full house.
