How time and circumstance can transform a play. Over the passage of 11 years, a combination of monumental change and depressing stagnation has taken its toll on Frank McGuinness's Carthaginians. It is now a more mellow, more reflective, more trenchant play than at its Dublin premiere in 1988 and subsequent emotional revival in Derry four years later.
Five years after the first IRA ceasefire, director Simon Magill has set it at a gentler pace, in a lower key and with an attractive naturalistic set by Carol Betera, thereby endowing it with a poignancy and a pragmatism that speak volumes for the terrifying difficulties involved in coming to terms with the demands of an uncertain peace. It is a tribute to the power and depth of the play that it has come through such unforeseen social and political turbulence and emerged all the stronger.
It remains a hugely impressive ensemble piece, though in this Belfast premiere production, the balance between the characters has yet to be firmly struck. Previously, the pivotal story might have been judged to belong to Maela, the middle-aged woman leading this graveyard vigil, in the hope of seeing again her 13-year-old daughter, who died of cancer on Bloody Sunday and whom she refuses to give up to the dead.
But Carole Nimmons's quiet downplaying of the role diverts our attention onto her companions, who have their own personal claims to self-imposed exile here, outside Derry's walls, among the Creggan tombstones. Paul Boyle, Dan Gordon, Stuart Graham, Stella Madden and Paula McFetridge are all entirely credible in conveying the tension and camaraderie of shared and relived past experiences, each forever tainted by the parts they played - or did not play - in the events of that awful day in January 1972. And Richard Dormer skilfully controls his portrayal of the high camp, hysterical humour and damaged vulnerability of the outcast Dido, homosexual queen of Derry, a city whose inhabitants, like its classical counterpart Carthage, have been to hell and back, but are surviving - just.
Carthaginians runs at the Lyric until September 18th. Phone Belfast 0801232 381081
