Poor
Gate Theatre, Dublin 1
★★★★☆
There is a sense of strain throughout this crowd-pleasing Gate Theatre adaptation of a hugely popular memoir by Katriona O’Sullivan. Published in 2023, Poor told the initially harrowing story of how O’Sullivan, raised by Irish parents in Coventry and Birmingham, overcame poverty to gain a PhD from Trinity College Dublin and, ultimately, a lectureship at Maynooth University.
An early incident finds her spotting her mum (the indestructible Hilda Fay) among the sex workers offering services at the bottom of her street. The child is raped by a figure represented as only an approaching shadow. Sonya Kelly, though gifted across the disciplines, took on some challenge in adapting that into a thumping evening at the theatre.
Only a curmudgeon could deny her success. The show has its problems. It occasionally paints in broad strokes – the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly-adjacent Trinity students are a bit much – but it always redeems itself by reconnecting with the author’s emotional intelligence.
Early on, Kelly and Róisín McBrinn, her director, establish a neat conceit that generates charm and insight. Throughout most of the production, the sharp Aisling O’Mara, as the older Katriona, is joined on stage by the winning Hollie Lawlor, as her younger self (a role Hollie will alternate with Pippa Owens). The child is always in the adult and the later adult is always germinating in the child. O’Mara suffers. Lawlor retains a positive front.
READ MORE
This is a grim depiction of Irish life in the English West Midlands (where authority figures will insist on calling her “Kat-ree-own-ah”). Both her parents have addiction problems. Dad (a roguish Aidan Kelly) ends up in prison. Various unsavoury individuals hang about the house. It is an illustration of how the small mercies are distributed that O’Sullivan finds herself morosely observing that you’re better off with a flattened heroin addict than an unpredictable alcoholic for a mum.
The book is forever with us. Literally. A copy is often in the hands of one Katriona or another, and the script frequently references chapters and page numbers. In one delightful metamoment, O’Sullivan prompts a befuddled father, hopelessly searching for excuses, from the ubiquitous yellow paperback.
You could not, however, say the piece was imprisoned by fealty to the source. This is a busy production that, in its eagerness to win over the audience, suggests a puppy bounding round its new owners’ feet. A sofa stands in for a car as the family join in a rousing version of Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way. Later we get a frisky version of the same band’s Never Going Back Again and, towards the close, a properly moving take on their Songbird. (Somebody here has played Rumours until the groves have worn flat.)
All this takes place to fine lighting by Paul Keogan and tasteful set design from Aedín Cosgrove: the backdrop suggests a Mondrian grid in very un-Mondrian muted shades.
The show does, perhaps, suffer a little from the inevitability of our destination. But the invention keeps us alert right up until a (forgivably) shameless tweak of the tearducts in the form of projected footage culled from remarkable real life. Expect this show to keep returning and keep selling out.
Runs at the Gate, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, until November 2nd
