Silent

Mill Theatre, Dublin

For a show about those overlooked by society and struggles so hesitantly explored that they sometimes seem invisible, the writer and performer Pat Kinevane makes quite a spectacle. Playing Tino McGoldrig, a homeless man named after the silent movie star, Rudolph Valentino, Kinevane’s new show for Fishamble is actually full of sound: the bustle of foot traffic, the scratchy warmth of gramophones, a cacophony of memories and the grounding rattle of another coin landing in his jar.

“If anyone asks, I’m not here at all, right?” begins McGoldrig, who, having emerged from under an earth-brown blanket, already seems like an apparition.

His narrative may be disjointed, telling the history of Cork-born Tino now living rough in Dublin, and the precipitous suicide of his gay brother, Pearse. But it moves with clear purpose, just as Kinevane moves, in a striking performance under Jim Culleton’s effective direction, with the elegance of a dancer and the engaged poise of a boxer.

It’s a startling combination, as is Kinevane’s narrative method; a simple but restless array of styles and devices.

A fluent recollection comes over flamenco dance steps, Kinevane’s voice weaves into Denis Clohessy’s elaborate sound design, later he deadpans a recurring joke about a mental health hotline (“If you are obsessive compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly”) and – in the show’s bravest juxtaposition of whimsy and black comedy – a silent movie montage retells Pearse’s comically inept suicide attempts.

Over 90 minutes, such friction and juxtaposition is always interesting, if at times seemingly arbitrary: Tino wears a conductor’s coat tails, for instance, and as his mind wanders or fractures an orchestra can be heard warming up.

Like some movement sequences, it’s a nice device, but rather rootless and the consideration of its sound design trumps lighting and set by a long shot.

Where it works best, though, is in Kinevane’s unique ability, as writer and performer, to treat language with the caress of poetry and the disarming direct address of stand-up: his mother-in-law’s breath “was like an autopsy”; at his brother’s funeral, the word suicide was “bursting to escape behind the front teeth of everybody’s downturned mouth”.

You never doubt Kinevane’s savage indignation about society’s treatment of homelessness and mental health, but Silent’s lack of sentimentality and instruction avoids the aridity of issue drama. Instead, we get an intriguing puzzle of voices and an unexpected crescendo to a moving story, which, until its end, pulses with the erratic noise of life.

– Tours