The Drunkard, Town Hall Theatre, Fintan O'TooleEven when "melodrama" was a term of theatrical abuse, Tom Murphy never disdained the form.
He drew on it in his early play, The Morning After Optimism. The Blue Macushla and Murphy's versions of The Vicar of Wakefield and The Informer had strong melodramatic elements. His best plays owe something to opera, which is not known for its realist restraint. He has always understood that in some respects Expressionism is just a fancy name for melodrama.
So Murphy's decision to create his own version of a famous early melodrama has a logic bordering on inevitability. The Drunkard, attributed to W. H. Smith and A Gentleman (possibly P.T. Barnum) was a mid-19th-century sensation, thanks in large part to the temperance movement.
Though he draws also on similar plays by Douglas Jerrold and William Pratt, laces in lines from sources ranging from Pádraic Ó Conaire to Shakespeare, and transfers the action to an Irish Boucicault-land, Murphy sticks closely to the basic form that a 19th-century audience would have expected: wronged innocence, cruel-hearted malice, the struggle of the soul of a weak-willed but basically decent man and, at the last moment, redemption.
If the form is relatively simple, however, the problems of presenting it to a contemporary audience are not. On the one hand, we can no longer take the heavy- handed plotting and moral absolutes of melodrama entirely seriously. On the other, there is really no point in simply sending these plays up. Parody is so easy that it quickly becomes tedious. And besides, can we in Ireland now really afford to patronise the theme of The Drunkard: the human cost of alcoholism? Murphy's solution is masterful. He surrounds the core of the play with a ring of comic irony that protects it from our superior scorn. We are presented first with the "author", Sir Arden Rencelaw, the posh philanthropist who also serves as narrator, scene-setter and deus ex machina. The delicious mix of rhetorical fervour and fatuous self-delusion in Nick Dunning's Sir Arden is very funny. But it also undercuts the assumption of 19th-century melodrama that that there is a benign social order, directed by a good-hearted Establishment, which will ultimately rescue the poor from distress.
Aside from its comic richness, this device allows the play to proceed without further parody. We know, and are reminded, that the whole story that follows is Sir Arden's self-aggrandising display. And since we are not being asked to take it as gospel, we don't have to put up our defences of knowing mockery. We can actually sympathise with the poor but virtuous Arabella (Sarah-Jane Drummey) and her decent but drink- demented husband, Edward (Rory Keenan), as they struggle to escape the clutches of evil lawyer Phelim McGinty (Stephen Brennan).
The biggest problem with Lynne Parker's otherwise excellent production is that it doesn't always trust Murphy's instinct. When Drummey and Keenan are allowed to play their characters straight, taking their dilemmas entirely seriously, the play works superbly. But there are too many lapses into unnecessary parody. The first scene, where we meet Arabella and her widowed mother (Pauline McLynn) in their humble cottage, is hammed up disastrously. So is what ought to be the terrifying scene where McGinty attempts to rape the defenceless Arabella.
McLynn herself demonstrates the perils of parody and the rewards of keeping a straight face. As the mother, she does her Mrs Doyle shtick to largely irritating effect. In her other main role as Agnes Earley, driven mad by the alcohol-related death of her fiancé on the eve of her wedding, she is a vastly more effective and affecting presence.
Fortunately, as in the play itself, the forces of good are more than equal to the forces of evil. The virtues of Parker's production - the perfect pacing, the terrific performances of Drummey and Keenan, Brennan's enthusiastically evil McGinty, Monica Frawley's delightfully angular set and costumes, the spot-on score written and performed by Ellen Cranitch and Helene Montague, the splendid staging of the songs that pepper the performance - vanquish the vices.
Above all, the cast gets full value from Murphy's brilliant variations on 19th- century stage rhetoric. Far from slurring its speech, The Drunkard is a wonderfully eloquent play. Murphy's ear is finely attuned to the glories and absurdities of melodramatic exclamation, and even while he is wringing out its ludicrous over- statement, he is also making it sing. He allows us to hear the energy and anguish of a world that shaped our own and in doing so to give it the respect it deserves.
Ends tonight in Galway. Everyman Theatre, Cork, July 25th to August 2nd (021-4501673); Samuel Beckett Centre, Dublin, August 5th to 23rd (01-8721122); www.centralticketbureau.com/drunkard
The Mysteries 2003
NUI Galway Tennis Courts
Patrick Lonergan
The good health of our theatre is dependent on the freedom of Irish companies to explore new ways of working - but artistic experimentation can sometimes frustrate audiences, whose primary concern is, understandably, with having access to work of a consistently high standard. This clash is particularly evident in the recent development of Macnas: the company has certainly earned the right to try new things, but Galway audiences remain concerned by the ongoing absence of the annual Macnas parade from their city's streets.
The Mysteries 2003, a co-production with Coventry's Belgrade Theatre, attempts to address the needs of both the company and its local audience. First staged in medieval England, the Mystery Plays recreated key stories from the Bible, with entire cities involved in their production. By invoking this tradition of civic participation in theatre, Macnas restates its commitment to community work, while exploring interesting new ground.
This combination offers many surprises. Vincent Woods's script is a modern treatment of Christ's life, which combines sophisticated narrative technique with a lively contemporary idiom. The performances, directed by Mikel Murfi and Richard Hayhow, are presented in a highly stylised manner that is elegant and expressive. And there's plenty of the usual Macnas magic: the show's design is stunning, the professional cast are impressive, and there's the welcome sight of familiar Galway faces in the amateur troupe.
The production's sophistication is, however, sometimes incompatible with its practical elements. The audience is asked to stand outdoors for almost 90 minutes - an arrangement that is appropriate to the production's glorious setpieces but which also impedes the kind of sustained concentration the script and movement deserve. Poor acoustics make much of the dialogue inaudible. And then there's the rain: while the show coincided with exceptionally bad weather (leading to the cancellation of two performances), the choice of an entirely unsheltered venue for an outdoor Irish production is questionable.
Script, performance, spectacle and setting all have many positive qualities - but the combination doesn't really gel. Macnas is moving forward artistically without losing sight of its home city; unfortunately, this particular production is admirable but over-ambitious.
The Junebug Symphony
Black Box Theatre
Michael Seaver
Predictability is the curse of theatre. Even the tiniest transparency in a plot or its conclusion can cause the audience's attention to drift and spoil the illusion - so to come across a performance like The Junebug Symphony is a rare privilege. For almost 90 minutes a series of madcap vignettes follow one another completely unpredictably, keeping the entire audience riveted and spellbound. The plot, so much as it exists, is loosely tied around the sleep and dreams of creator and lead performer James Thiérrée, where paintings come to life, mirrors have a mind of their own, humans suddenly mutate into strange creatures and objects.
Thiérrée is the grandson of Charlie Chaplin (although with his talent he doesn't need to trade off anyone's name) and was reared as a performer in Le Circus Imaginaire, where he developed his various talents, including the obvious ones - trapeze, acrobatics, and a comic's sense of timing - as well as the more unusual ones, such as rollerblading backwards while playing the violin. He is a charming and joyous performer whose character can be both gormless and self-knowing while trapped inside a dreamworld that sometimes gets a bit nightmarish.
Contortionist Raphaëlle Boitel slithers around the stage on all fours and can be both houseplant and love interest on the trapeze and Uma Ysamat is the oil painting from hell. Not only do her eyes follow people around the room, but she also steps out of her frame to remonstrate with Thiérrée or to seduce a formidable bearded man in between singing opera. But Magnus Jakobsson is Thiérrée's best comic foil and the bane of his dreams. When not throwing himself around the stage he is a mirror image with his own taste in music or an unwanted visitor at the front door. As well as his acrobatic skills he can get a laugh with a simple knowing look at the audience.
A large proportion of children mingled with the adults and, although they applauded frequently in response to the illusions and gags, this performance was more than just a collection of tricks. The Junebug Symphony is a thoughtfully constructed work of theatre and, incredibly, the first performance Thiérrée has created.
Immediacy between audience and performer is always magnified outside the theatre and the street performance of Australian physical theatre group Stalker drew gasps and claps as their stilted bodies towered over viewers or tumbled to the ground. Four Riders is based on the four riders of the apocalypse in the Book of Revelations, and the four stilted creatures paraded through the streets drawing the following crowd to Spanish Arch. The physical restriction of their elongated legs mirrored their contradictory equine grace and awkwardness: the audience thrilled at their gallop through the space, but recoiled when they fell to the ground and struggled to get up. Although driven by energetic performances by the four performers and two musicians, there were moments of stagnation where the movement material seemed undramatic.
Street performance is a vital part of the festival, indeed of Galway people themselves, as was evidenced by the mass of flowers left opposite Greenacres Health Food Shop, the usual patch for Johnny Massacre, the local street performer and sword-swallower extraordinaire, who died last week. His wicked sense of humour and hoarse throated implorations to children to tell their parents to "give money to the funny man" will be missed. And although Four Riders was affected by the torrential rains the preceded Sunday evening's floods (two performances were cancelled), a rain-sodden collection of fellow-buskers gathered in front of the flowers for a "memorial busk" earlier in the afternoon.
Breaking Voices is a dance video by Icelandic choreographer Helena Jónsdóttir, which runs all through the festival at the Aula Maxima, NUI Galway, where three backing singers show irreverence to a tenor's aria. Although Jónsdóttir is a relative newcomer to the genre of dance video, as choreographer and director of Breaking Voices, she has to take full blame for a lot of the clumsy editing that stuttered the flow of action. Some moments did reveal a keen eye for merging body and image, but unfortunately a lot of the detail in this dimly lit video was missed through daylight filtering into the space.
- Galway Arts festival continues until Sunday: 091-566577 or
www.galwayartsfestival.com
