What Are You Afraid Of?
Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny
★★★★★
“I don’t know this,” he begins. It’s an actor’s nightmare. The thing is, it’s all of our nightmare, the fear that something familiar, what we know well, where we fit in the world, suddenly disappears.
Peter Hanly was an accomplished and well-known actor, familiar from decades performing in Rough Magic productions, at the Abbey, at the Gate and on other stages, and on screen from Braveheart to Ballykissangel.
Then, in 2011, at dress rehearsal for Brian Friel’s monologue play Molly Sweeney in the Gate in Dublin, he had a sudden, overwhelming anxiety that he would forget the lines he knew well. “I just couldn’t believe that I knew them, that they would all be there waiting for me when I needed them.”
Ultimately the terror, the severe stage fright, meant he disappeared from view for more than a decade. “I was an actor for 30 years, show after show after show, and then it stopped. Did no one fucking notice? Did you not miss me?”
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Now here he is, in this Rough Magic and Kilkenny Arts Festival production, back on stage as actor and playwright – and subject. This is Hanly’s story, but it’s much more than that.
He explores what happened, both in life and in his head. Domhnall Herdman plays his grandfather Tom Hanly, a drapery apprentice at Clerys who died before Peter was born, and here is both provocation and guardian angel. Niamh McAllister is the stage manager’s voice, terrorising, taunting, bullying (“Loser. Quitter”), a counterpoint to his grandfather.
They are characters are in his head, theatrical devices, his inner voices; part of his anxiety, and performing his anxiety. There are “real” people, too, including McAllister’s myriad and often wickedly amusing therapists he visits in his distress.
This manages to be both complex and simple, an exploration of how anxiety works on the human mind, but also a really strong narrative. There’s interaction between Hanly, real and imagined characters, the voices, screen versions of himself. It toys with the nature of memory, time travel, inner life and outer life; the interplay between what’s happening to him, as his parents’ own memories flicker, is tender and illuminating.
This is both playful and profound. Lynne Parker directs her long-time colleague with sensitivity and sureness and nuance, and a deft comic touch that envelops the audience. It skilfully bounces between the delicacies of the human mind, how exposed vulnerabilities can paralyse a life, and enlightening entertainment. This is clever and very funny.
It breaks the fourth wall, connecting with the audience, and there is a delightful self-consciousness in what they are about; “move the story on,” Hanly is urged. And it revels in accomplished, swish stagecraft: video (Eoin Robinson), sound and composition (Fiona Sheil), set and lighting (Zia Bergin-Holly) and costumes (Sorcha Ní Fhloinn) are all intrinsic to the sophisticated telling of Hanly’s story.
It glories in all these machinations, but they also serve the telling in a way that is totally appropriate to its theme. The script in hand, the autocue, are part of this theatricality, and part of the meaning.
This is an extraordinary piece of work. A totally absorbing, moving and funny piece of theatre made by someone who can no longer act. Oh, but he can: Hanly’s performance is deft and complex, vulnerable, honest, warm. “Who are you when you’re not an actor?” he asks himself. The anguish it has taken to get here is clear, as is the extensive development. It’s about theatre but mostly about being human.
[ Peter Hanly was one of Ireland’s most recognisable actors. Then he vanishedOpens in new window ]
This universality is pointed up from the start, the audience invited to share their own fears on cards, anonymously.
This is raw, and rich. It holds the audience with compassion, while provoking, enlightening, enriching.
At Watergate Theatre, as part of Kilkenny Arts Festival, until Tuesday, August 12th, and at Smock Alley, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, from Thursday, September 25th, until Saturday, October 4th
