Irish Times writers review The Woman Who Walked Into Doors at The Helix in DCU and Stolen Child at Andrew's Lane Theatre.

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

The Helix, DCU

Review by Fintan O'Toole

Stage adaptations of novels make sense only if they fill a gap where a play should be. There was nothing in Irish theatre quite like Patrick McCabe's exposure of the psychotic undertow of small-town life in The Butcher Boy until McCabe and Joe O'Byrne presented their superb stage version Frank Pig Says Hello! Likewise, there has been nothing in the theatre quite like Paula Spencer's voice in Roddy Doyle's 1996 novel The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, until this often terrific stage version by Doyle and O'Byrne came along.

This is, though, a more difficult project than Frank Pig. That show was conceived in parallel with the writing of the original novel, and came well before Neil Jordan's stupendous film version. Paula Spencer, on the other hand, has been around the block twice before. The novel itself grew out of the bleakly brilliant 1994 television drama series Family, in which Paula was a central character. The question of what a theatrical version has to add to a character who has already been superbly dramatised is a much more open one.

For all the differences, though, the McCabe and Doyle novels have one big thing in common. Both are utterly dominated by a first-person narrative voice that gets into your head and will not easily be dislodged. Frank Pig worked because O'Byrne built it unapologetically around David Gorry's stunning embodiment of Francie's voice. The Woman works because the same decision is made, and Hilda Fay, as Paula, carries it through with equal force.

The choice is not without its costs. Put simply, it means that the play is far closer to the novel than to the TV series. While Family gave equal attention to each of the Spencers, telling in turn the stories of Paula, her brutal husband Charlo and her son and daughter, the novel is Paula's perspective. So is the play.

This means that although there are six other actors, they don't get much of a look in. The assorted children, neighbours, relatives, Gardaí, medical personnel and landladies are, sometimes literally, cardboard cut-outs. More seriously, the great Brian O'Byrne, who gets to display his comic genius in the early scenes where Paula meets Charlo, becomes simply a personification of violence as time goes on.

Yet this is still the right way to go. The story is what it is: Paula's testimony of love, betrayal, brutality and survival. To pull it apart and re-structure it too radically would be to risk, not just its rich linguistic texture, but its moral balance. For Doyle's achievement with Paula is a remarkably delicate one. In dealing with the reality of domestic violence, he has created a woman who is victimised, but is not a victim.

A victim is a passive presence but Paula is an active force. She is not a masochist. She is not asking to be beaten, raped and humiliated.

But she is a sexual being, turned on by the very things in Charlo that will make him such a nightmare: his physical strength, his assumption of dominance, the status she gains by being on the arm of a hard man. Even when she becomes the object of that domineering brutality, she still cannot entirely separate it from love.

The triumph of Hilda Fay's performance is her combination of this subtle and delicate balance with an overwhelming sense of energy. She refuses to be a one-dimensional object of sympathy, a pathetic creature whimpering in the corner. Her survival is not a mere failure to die or go mad. It is the fierce and constant struggle to re-build the dyke of personal dignity.

Fay embodies the paradoxes of Paula superbly. She is ladylike and foul-mouthed, always honest and always trying to escape the unbearable truth. The bruises have made her, in both senses, tender: raw and painful to touch, but also loving and compassionate.

Around this exceptional performance, O'Byrne swirls an inventively choreographed kaleidoscope of scenes, as Paula's memories switch back and forth in time. Again, the highly-stylised form works, both theatrically and morally. It keeps a balance between showing and telling. And it prevents the sex and violence from becoming voyeuristic.

The rhythm is not perfect. Things seem to unfold rather more slowly than intended. (The playing time is about 20 minutes longer than advertised.) And the ending arrives with an uncomfortable abruptness. But the novel's extraordinary tone, in which warmth and humour are seamlessly joined to horror and viciousness, is effectively re-invented for the stage. That allows the light of hope to illuminate a dark story that bears, and indeed demands, re-telling.

Ends May 24th

Stolen Child

Andrew's Lane Theatre

Review by Gerry Colgan

There are, I suppose, risks inherent in reviving a play like Stolen Child so soon after its début last year. The known plot may expose its blueprint, the characters lose their conviction, the dialogue sheds its ring of authenticity. Of the four characters, two are now played by different actors, and there has been some minor rewriting.

If gamble it be, it has paid off handsomely. The play confirms itself as one of the best new works for the Irish stage for some years; true, funny-sad and packing an emotional punch. The past may indeed be that foreign country where they do things differently, but the events and characters created here touch national nerves that make us look around today with apprehension. We are still too close to their pain to be detached from it.

At its core, is the search of a woman approaching middle-age for the mother she never knew, who apparently gave her for adoption as a baby. She hires a private detective, and tries to manage her affair with a married man while the investigation proceeds. When she becomes pregnant, past and present blend in a confused emotional and physical miscarriage. But a reunion awaits her, and with it the rebirth of hope.

The play is beautifully written by Yvonne Quinn and Bairbre Ní Chaoimh (who also directs), Ingrid Craigie is the stressed Angela, Barbara Adair her mother, Malachy McKenna the quirky detective, and Seamus Moran the married lover.

There is a sense that some of the dialogue has been reworked, and the new performances include different points of emphasis; but comparisons would be odious. The characters have been before, and are again here, created wholly.

Robert Ballagh's set design, a three-level stage containing a smart flat, a shambolic office and a tiny room in Manchester, perfectly accommodates the action of this inspired and altogether satisfying drama.

Runs here until May 10th, then on tour