Theatre review: Before Monsters Were Made

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History is not written by the victors, insists a man under suspicion: “It’s written by those who can shape the simplest narrative.” It is not an opinion that stands up to much scrutiny in Ross Dungan’s new play, and nor does its speaker, Vincent Colgan (Lorcan Cranitch), an ageing music teacher in 1960s Mayo who is trailed by dark rumour when a young girl is found dead.

Dungan’s play, by ambitious contrast, is an exercise in something more complicated: folding a detective plot into a family drama. As per genre demands, this narrative becomes convoluted and over-detailed, elaborate with exposition, offstage events and the lies and self-deceptions of its characters.

More cunningly, though, Dungan’s play is an inquisition into stories themselves. It begins with Vincent’s son David (charmingly played by Peter Coonan, an actor of sufficient vocal husk to suggest a biological connection to Cranitch) consoling his young daughter with a cutesy myth about two warring brothers reconciled.

This, we learn, is actually one of Vincent’s stories, and, as the play continues, all such inheritance becomes distrusted. There is David’s sceptic and scolding wife, Abigail (nicely played by Orla Fitzgerald), whose marriage is quickly dissolving; Vincent’s much younger second wife, Jackie (Janice Byrne), herself long hounded by ugly rumours. And then, most pathetically, there is Graham (Manus Halligan), David’s brother and a comically inept Garda sergeant, who at one point just wants to be reassured that his lonely, stumbling life is part of a preordained plan, like a character in search of a malign author.

As director of 15th Oak’s production, Ben Kidd elegantly serves Dungan’s play without vigorously interrogating it. The first two scenes, for instance, are almost superfluous; all their details are recapitulated during the extended, tense dinner party scene. Middle-class professionals all, they speak in an undifferentiated, mordant Mayo grammar, which you might call “Syngetax” (“It’s up to yourselves to be populating your plate,” Abigail urges her dinner guests). Flash-forward slips between two time frames, ably facilitated by Alma Kelliher’s soundscape, are more confusing than essential.

When it's more focused, the production finds real conviction, however. Zia Holly's circular set, a bare wooden space that she handsomely illuminates, resolves into flung earth and upturned furniture, treating the drama like a domestic blast site. With everyone here playing detective, Kidd keeps the accomplished ensemble in discreet motion along a fluid pace. One clever, understated sequence clears the stage of everything but the characters, and they circle a troubled centre like planets around a dying sun. Okay, the plot twists won't keep anyone in agonising suspense, but that may be Dungan's more absorbing mystery: why do we trust authority, in our families or in our stories, and what happens when it collapses? That will always make a relevant tale, when curious minds hit the borders of simple narratives. Sometimes "here be monsters" isn't enough. Until May 16th