The Realistic Joneses review: What’s it all about?

The Realistic Joneses

Smock Alley Theatre

★★★☆☆

It’s no wonder the creative forces behind a string of celebrated Samuel Beckett productions, the director Judy Hegarty Lovett and the actor Conor Lovett, of Gare St Lazare Ireland, were attracted to Will Eno’s beautifully written but inscrutable play, which has mysterious characters and many funny lines, and where nothing very much happens, twice.

It’s a flip observation but has elements of truth. This is all very odd. Eno’s play glistens with a sort of hyperreality, well served here by Molly O’Cathain’s set, Mel Mercier’s sound, Simon Bennison’s lighting and performances of a heightened normality. In anonymous, balmy, American small-town suburbia a new couple move in next door to Bob and Jennifer Jones (played by Joe Spano and Sorcha Fox). The new neighbours, John (Lovett) and Pony (Faline England), are also called Jones. It turns out that Bob has a serious, mysterious illness. The keeping-up-with is unspoken and various; some of this may be realistic on the surface.

Will Eno’s dialogue is blunt and staccato, full of nonsequiturs, contradictions, one-liners, literalisms and miscommunications, and regularly breaks social norms of conversation. It is sometimes confusing and always very funny

Eno’s dialogue is blunt and staccato, full of nonsequiturs, contradictions, one-liners, literalisms and miscommunications, and regularly breaks social norms of conversation. It is sometimes confusing and always very funny.

Bob, John and Pony have no boundaries and in varying ways lack empathy. After Jennifer has shared something difficult about Bob’s illness, Pony offers “Say no more.” Not that she understands, but “I don’t want you to say more.”

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Jennifer, the sole connection with reality, is perhaps the audience anchor in a sea of absurd. “I’m so sick of men making speeches and making mistakes, and being sick and being afraid.”

So what’s it all about? On the face of it, how people deal differently with severe illness. But also memory, the nature of life, the human condition. The script balances questions of life and existence and relationships and the point of us all with very mundane activities like sitting in the yard or shopping for groceries or cleaning the fridge. In this Gare St Lazare Ireland coproduction with Rubicon Theatre Company and Laguna Playhouse, Hegarty Lovett beautifully twists its ordinariness into disturbing surreality.

Running 120 minutes without a break, The Realistic Joneses is weird and bleak, and very funny and sharp. Godot in suburbia, perhaps

Running 120 minutes without a break, this is weird and bleak, and very funny and sharp. Godot in suburbia, perhaps.

“This was fun”, says John. “Well, not fun, but some other words.”

It likely left the audience a bit confused. At various points you might wonder: where’s this going? What it’s about? What’s the point of it? Is this it? Much like life.

Runs at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin 8, until Sunday, October 16th, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival