Review

Fintan O'Toole reviews Auntie and Me by the Canadian playwright Morris Panych currently playing at the Gaiety Theatre.

Auntie and Me

Gaiety Theatre

In the sumptuous surroundings of the refurbished Gaiety, Auntie and Me by the Canadian playwright Morris Panych is a small play in a big theatre. As a two-hander consisting largely of monologue - or, more accurately, a one-and-a-half-hander - it is the kind of slight, well-crafted chamber piece that would usually be found in an intimate space. That it has ended up in one of the country's biggest houses as a high-profile event has much more to do with the difficult economics of the unsubsidised commercial theatre than it has with any kind of aesthetic judgment.

In an ideal world, a space such as the Gaiety would be occupied by lavish, large-scale commercial productions. These are tough times for independent producers, however, and the name of the game is risk minimisation. Auntie and Me has worked well in the UK as a star vehicle for the comedian Alan Davies. The governing equation is that one set plus cheap costumes plus two actors multiplied by a large audience equals commercial happiness. Or, at worst, that all of that minus a large audience equals a relatively contained level of losses.

Given that the logic at work here thus belongs more to the business pages than the arts section, Auntie and Me is not at all bad. Anna Mackmin recreates her Edinburgh festival and West End productions, with Risteárd Cooper taking over the Davies role and Anna Manahan taking the place of Margaret Tyzack. Hayden Griffin reproduces his original designs. The Dublin production may thus be essentially a facsimile, but it is a slick and skilful copy.

Auntie and Me is essentially an extended riff on a single black joke. Cooper's Kemp, a misanthropic bank clerk, leaves his job in response to a letter from his Aunt Grace, who says she is old and dying. He is her last known relative and sets up house with his aunt for the duration of her expiry, which turns out not to be as imminent as all that. In fact, he is still there a year and a half later with the almost entirely silent aunt in no hurry to kick the bucket.

Kemp is a younger Victor Meldrew. Panych gives him two kinds of sour one-liner. There is his flagrant anxiety to hasten auntie's obsequies: "I'm worried about your health; it seems to be improving," or "This knitting of yours, is it a long-term project?" Also, there is sardonic reflection on his own miserable childhood and jaundiced view of the world: "Not being a Catholic I had no idea that misery and self-loathing could actually be a religion." None of this is madly original and it is not hard to predict that Grace will turn out to be not quite what she seems and that Kemp's manic cynicism will give way at last to a recognition of his own loneliness and need. But Panych is smart enough to predict this predictability. He doesn't present the play as any kind of epic masterpiece, and is content to offer a short, fast-moving, episodic story that is mercifully free of pretension, elaboration or overt sentimentality.

Mackmin's long experience with the piece shows in her perfect grasp of its strengths and limitations and both Risteárd Cooper and Anna Manahan have the skill and wit to take it for what it is. The demands on the two actors could hardly be in greater contrast. Cooper has to be voluble, manic, depressive, farcical and ultimately sympathetic and he navigates both the pervasive shallows and the occasional depths with real virtuosity. Manahan's decades of experience show, meanwhile, in her ability to do very little very well. She has two words in the first half and maybe 50 in the second, and a lesser actress would be tempted to fill the silences with too many gestures. Manahan, however, knows that in this case less really is more, and her restraint is both effective and affecting.

It remains the case that both they and the play would be better served by a much smaller venue, but to bear with dignity the weight of excessive expectations does honour to all three.

Runs until September 6th