Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
The brothers in Sebastian Barry’s early play, now long past their boyhood, are two lonely, windswept souls, still labouring on a declining hill farm on the Cork-Kerry border, still dreaming of escape. This they find in the movies, a mythology of Marx Brothers anarchy and cowboy solidarity that flickers through the opening moments of Noel Pearson’s new production like fading promises.
The play that follows finds a similar escape from theatrical convention. Its short scenes move with the elliptical sense of a dream – or a series of film reels – where lyrically articulate characters underscore the poetic sensibilities of their writer. It is a memory play of sorts, something Paul Keogan’s gently impressive set realises through shifting details (a translucent house facade, a domestic space barely separated from a perimeter of grassy earth, light that lifts and dips), but it’s hardly a work of nostalgia.
Pat Shortt's wincing Mick is bitterly aware of an eroding way of life, the mockery he senses from "another Ireland altogether", and a relationship with his artless brother, Josey (played a little too artfully by Tom Hickey, which has become a parody of marriage. Director Jim Culleton treats the play with elegant clarity, moving its scenes with stately pace and even screening part of the Marx Brothers' Duck Soupat the interval.
The problem, though, is that Barry's play is not as clear. It is a mood piece of switching styles and misty allusions, revealing sexual and political frustration and darkening detail. An early dream sequence, for instance, where neighbourly phantoms play cards around Mick's bed, feels static under sober treatment, and amplifies the more leaden moments of the text. Asked if his brother is well, Mick replies: "My brother is a well; deep, stony and dry." It's not a bad description of Boss Grady's Boys,and one wonders if such a huge theatre suits the intimacy of Barry's play, or if radio ads hardy with canned laughter create unmeetable expectations.
It would be a shame for the characters in Barry’s elegiac work, so poignantly marginalised that we see Mick marvel at a flush toilet and carry a toothbrush as a mark of civility, to be then sidelined by the audience.
Runs until September 11th
