ENERGY IS A CRUCIAL, and often underestimated, component of most of the creative arts. The energy which drives Michael Harding's new play is derived from a powerful anger, possibly best exemplified in the opening lines, delivered from behind a screen by an apparently orthodox parish priest: "I know you're out there, God ... a goldfish could run the universe better than you". Canon Adam Bailey, local tyrant of a remote rural parish, had joined the priesthood because he wanted to say Mass, and claims loyalty to the letter of the law. But saying Mass now is like fox trotting on the Titanic.
It is the era of decline in unquestioning respect for the clergy, the time of media pursuit of accusations of sexual abuse, and the new bishop, elevated from the academic ranks of the seminary, stands accused of a sexual relationship with Peter, a psychologically unstable homosexual 16 year old seminarian, a parishioner of Canon Bailey's, who has a religious fixation on the Virgin Mary. The investigator of the truth or otherwise of Peter's accusations is Father Rehill, the seminary's dean, and the background is of young seminarians of various shades of faith who are about to be ordained.
The author has set his audience some problems in his dramatically studied eschewal of chronology in revealing his story. He may also be assuming a knowledge of Catholic theology which not everyone will share to the same degree. But, even if the situations portrayed can no longer come as a surprise in this changed and changing world, he still confronts us with disturbing and provocative images, ideas and situations. He has, on his own evidence, good cause for the anger which drives his play, even if the resolution of the drama comes across as something of a moral and dramatic cop out.
Brian Brady's direction matches the energy of the text even if it does not always lead us with clarity through the convolutions of time within the play. Jamie Vartan's setting of screens, walls and big doors catches impressionistically the sense of the church as an institution which distances itself from ordinary folk, and Trevor Dawson's lighting is excellently bleak and illuminating.
But the most abiding experiences of the night are in the performances. Pat Laffan's Canon Bailey is a theatrical tower of bull headed strength right up until the unpersuasive conclusion, and Shane Hagan's young Peter is the embodiment of a human bomb which could explode with the slightest shaking. Clive Geraghty's bishop manages with suave intelligence to leave us uncertain throughout of the truth or otherwise of the accusations against him, and Barry Barnes's dean leaves us in little doubt of the political worldliness which may make him unsuited for the job of caring for souls. Tom Murphy's young Father Ciaran manages some nicely comic moments in his vocational uncertainty, while Frank Laverty does the same with his spiritual unsuitability for the job, and Andrew Bennett seems already set in his youth for a fine job in the Vatican's civil service. Terry Byrne is Ciaran's long suffering widowed housekeeper dad.
It is an evening that requires the closest attention from its audience, but that attention is well rewarded, even if the conclusion (or the dramatic seeds which should have been planted earlier to herald it) would benefit from a little rethinking.
