Joe O'Byrne's new play, It Come Up Sun, is set in a yard in Dublin's dockland, surrounded by cliffs of container cargo. It has three characters. Joe is a middle-aged security guard, Billy a resident of a nearby halfway house for psychiatric patients, and Ania an illegal immigrant from eastern Europe.
We first meet Joe doing his solitary night rounds until Billy, a regular visitor to the yard, joins him. Something of their personalities and situations soon emerges. Joe is a stoic, unhappy in his marriage but devoted to his three children; a good man in a bad job. Billy is paranoid and mercurial, in constant physical and verbal overdrive.
Joe sends Billy to buy sweets, and in his absence detects sounds from a container. It is Ania with her dead mother, making a tragic attempt at escape from their troubled homeland. Joe's sympathies are engaged, though all he can do is look the other way. When Billy returns, his impractical mind sees a different way out. But the sun, and reality, must return.
The play contains little overt drama, being essentially a journey into the interior of its three diverse people. We learn about the men in some depth, but the woman is more of a catalyst than a complete person. Malgorzata Kozuchowska (from Warsaw) walks the tightrope of credibility with balance and grace, always adding to the role. Pat McGrath is altogether believable as Joe, living a life of quiet desperation.
There are disquieting moments of bathos, but where the author scores is in the creation of Billy, embodied by David Gorry with a staccato brilliance of voice and movement. It is an extraordinary blend of tragedy and survival, of an intelligence battling against crushing odds, and carries the play safely through its shallows. This, the acting in general and Paul Mercier's cluedin direction (and set design), make for a special evening of theatre.
Runs until November 18th; to book, phone: 01-8554673