Drainage Scheme review: Deception, back-scratching and cute-hoorism

Drainage Scheme

Peacock stage, Abbey Theatre

★★★☆☆

The title of this new play, written and directed by Dick Walsh, is both intriguing and says-on-the-tin. It’s a highly unusual topic and setting: a family-run drainage scheme in a north Co Kerry townland in the mid-18th century.

The result of five years’ research by Walsh and Noke Theatre company, the play offers a slice of the constrained, intertwined social structure of the time for ordinary, poor people. The Mahony family have almost nothing; their choice is between walking up and down the road or breaking their backs draining land belonging to the local lord, which is run by his valet, Darby Carthy – who rules the roost locally – and an uncompromising agent.

Within the family are rivalries and disagreements: about whether Polly Mahony (Billie Traynor) should apply for a 33-year lease in the name of her calculating son, Mich (Timmy Creed); and about hiding a manipulative, all-seeing priest cousin (Shane Connolly) in their midst. Cue much deception, back-scratching, clamouring for supremacy and cute-hoorism.

[ Dublin Fringe Festival: Full coverage here ]

While much of that dynamic is surprisingly familiar, it takes a while to figure out the social structure and plot. It’s a fascinating world. Kate Mahony (Roxanna Nic Liam) steps out of the action occasionally to address the audience, sometimes humorously: Darby Carthy was real, but there’s little documentation of ordinary people’s lives in the 18th century; “local history is a way to be obsessed with yourself without the actual work of self-reflection”; “the 18th century is really depressing”; and there was no excuse for staging the work of Richard Brinsley Sheridan when there were much better plays around.

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Perhaps the onstage saxophone and drum that punctuate the narrative, and the occasional singing by the cast, are allied to that bridging or framing device. It’s an interesting approach but works less well.

The accents are a geographical mix, and while the setting is the 18th century, the vernacular is definitely the 21st, which underlines the resonances of the play’s world for contemporary audiences.

Continues at the Peacock, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until Saturday, September 16th