Jo Bangles

Mill Studio, Dublin

She stands before us slathered in shockingly bright make-up, her short reddish hair teased up and her extremities bedecked by so many beads, jewels and bangles that they can be counted only with official estimates. This, we presume, is either Jo Bangles or the terrifying answer to whatever became of Cyndi Lauper.

Actually, it’s hard to tell whether Mary McEvoy, the lone performer of David Lordan’s new monologue for Eska Riada Productions, has been asked to inhabit a character at all. Jo speaks about herself almost entirely in the third person, narrating her life, delivering exposition with a drift of lyrical associations.

The show begins with a recorded mantra, shrouded by sound effects, that invokes a time outside of normal society – “the hour of the cat . . . the hour of the steaming loaf” – for a figure set apart. Later, referring to gossiping neighbours in her small west of Ireland town, Jo describes houses “leaning into each other at odd and scandalous angles”, as though even the architecture was a muttering conspiracy.

It’s never quite clear that Jo, eccentric if not quite mad, would have access to the words and imagery Lordan affords her. While Jo provides a meandering stream of back-story – from the incessant mockery of the town and the unlamented death of her drunken husband, to the inexplicable sudden muteness of her young daughter and her romantic plans to find stability – her character never feels established. Instead, she is subsumed by a fascination with her bauble-strewn self-image, likened to a Christmas tree, a lighthouse and, at one point, “a display, an exhibit, a performance.” Lordan doesn’t distinguish between display and performance either (this is his first play) and those familiar with his poetry will recognise a piece less involved with drama than language and sound.

Director Caroline Fitzgerald stays sensitive to such auditory qualities (Bangles’s biggest fear is silence), matching apple-munching character descriptions with chomping sound effects while weighting down her performer in trinkets that jangle with every movement, as soft and pleasing as wind chimes.

McEvoy performs the role with vigour and conviction, tracing every thought and impulse, but as her story continues along the loosest of narrative arcs, the play seems incidental. Resilient and unbowed, Bangles rebounds after every setback, we understand. But when the capacities of the stage seem unexplored, leaving stretches confined to Bangles’s imagination, there’s little to suggest that her search couldn’t lead her as comfortably to radio drama, prose or even poetry. Until Feb 6