Short on substance

THERE was a trick once in the old variety touring circuit in these islands: whatever the joke to be told, mention someone or some place locally, well known, leave the audience to work out whatever inference they chose, and the laugh would come. To some extent, this rather more metaphysical piece of theatre relies on the same trick: make reference to genetic inheritance in different places among a group of people of similar geographic origin and rely on the audience to read more into the situation than is actually contained in the text.

In fact, there is very little of substance in this text - muchless intellectual sinew or muscle than there was in True Lines, from the same creative stable (here a co production between the National Theatre Society and Bickerstaffe from Kilkenny), in which the actors created and John Crowley, edited and directed. If they are trying to say something coherent about genetic inheritance, environmental, influence and national origins, they have not made either intellectually or dramatically clear just what this is.

Having left it to the audience to square the dramatic, and philosophical circles, the company nonetheless performs with precision and style in imaginative projected settings suggesting the globe of Earth, the scattering of galaxies, the charts of hospital illness, the grotesque mystery of the shroud of Turin, the risks of New York and the Amazon basin, and more. Gertrude, Montgomery, Martin Murphy, Stephen Kennedy, Derdriu Ring and Olwen Fouere do their best, playing a variety of parts, to cloak them with character and personality that is not readily evident from the script.

Alas, they do not add enough to the mixture of allusion, banality and cliche to invest a poor text with any particular meaning or experience. Not even the central threads of inherited Huntington's disease or diabetes are followed through to any narrative or dramatic conclusion.

Make of it what you want.