SARA KEATINGreviews There Came a Gypsy Ridingat the Ramor Theatre, Cavan
“The country’s rotten with money”, Bridget declares at the opening of There Came A Gypsy Riding. Embittered harridan, “bad bitch”, prophet, or merely “confused fairy”, Bridget’s diagnosis of modern Ireland certainly rings true as Frank McGuinness’s play unfolds.
The plot is classically simple, almost Greek, in its set up, as it brings together a family on the eve of their dead son’s 21st birthday, hoping to solve the mystery of his suicide and expiate his ghost. Suicide is a sensitive subject – indeed, an epidemic among young men in rural Ireland – but McGuinness keeps the violent reality of Gene’s death off-stage and focuses on the family’s heartache. Mother Margaret, an English lecturer, grieves with a heart of stone; father, Leon, with guilty confusion; brother and sister Simon and Louise, with rage and despair. However, rather than unite them, Gene’s death has fractured the family; it is by letting go that they will finally be able to move on.
Despite the ostensibly naturalistic style and structure, McGuinness’s play seems drawn to deeper truths, as revealed by the forked tongue of the family’s mad cousin Bridget as she wanders on stage at intervals, puncturing the atmosphere with her irreverent truths. Freed from the conventions of polite society Bridget can see straight through the monied veneer of modern life. The bijou West of Ireland cottage – artfully designed by Maree Kearns to allow a circular thrust to the interior and exterior action – and the competing attitudes to money that underpin much of the conflict between the family members, suggests a deeper root to the problem, a cultural one: Celtic Tiger values.
Padraic MacIntyre’s production for Livin’ Dred, however, denies this more subtle reading. Rooted firmly within a realistic tradition, it strips the play of the epic scope it needs to reach beyond polemic, and as a result the characters often seem to posit mere positions rather than embody truth.
As the subversive Briget, only Bríd Ní Neachtain has the freedom to make of McGuinness’s play what she will. Here, the Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, and McGuinness have it right: there is much wisdom in great folly. Until Sat
