Some Voices is an honourable example of that decent English tradition. It gives a subtle and sympathetic account of what it is like to be caught in the middle of the abandonment of the mentally-ill called, in a great triumph of Orwellian newspeak, "care in the community", writes Fintan O'Toole
In his central character, Ray, Penhall presents a portrait of a man with schizophrenia that is not disfigured by either lurid stereotypes or lazy sentimentality.
The action of the play takes place in the interval between Ray's discharge from one institution and re-admittance to another. Penhall does not pretend that a man like Ray is just a cuddly victim. He drinks too much. He is insensitive to other people. He won't take his medication. His innocence is a danger to himself and others. No one who had a choice would want to trade places with Pete, the bewildered but essentially sincere brother who has to look after Ray. Penhall's realism, in other words, is genuine.
There are no agitprop simplicities or slogans, just a humane and compassionate insight into the world of the lost tribe that wanders the margins of our bright cities. Which is, oddly enough, why the play is far better suited to the screen (it was filmed last year) than to the stage. Its drama is not very theatrical.
Part of the problem is that theatre takes much longer to tell this kind of story and that you can't watch it without being aware of how much more efficient and real it would be on screen. John O'Brien's production for the Iomhá Ildánach and Purpleheart companies simply feels slow. More profoundly, theatre has trouble with stories in which illness plays a central role.
The immediacy of theatre demands a sense that the people on stage are inventing themselves as we watch. With Ray, we are forced to ask all the time who is really acting: is it Ray or his condition? Pete, at one point, asks this very question, but Penhall's awareness of the issue doesn't make it any less problematic.The lack of inherent drama forces Penhall to out-source it. Ray forms a relationship with an Irish woman, Laura, who is a rather blank character. But this in turn leads us to Laura's relationship with the abusive and obsessive Dave, a melodramatic Irish psychopath of the type that was in vogue for a while on English TV soaps. This more lurid plotline cuts across the subtlety of Penhall's portrayal of Ray.
It is not surprising that in this production, Les Martin's Ray is far stronger and more convincing than the other, rather underwritten characters. Or that the most brilliant moment is a wordless passage of pure theatre, when Ray's fellow-sufferer, the apparently belligerent Ives (played with dignity and intelligence by Frank Coughlan) collapses like a house of cards in the face of a casual insult. It is moments like this that make a piece of theatre live and for all its decency and sympathy, Some Voices has too few of them.
Runs until Saturday. To book: 01-2312929
