Set majestically and bleakly by Monica Frawley on a snow-covered terraced turf bog in Offaly, this is probably Marina Carr's most ambitious play to date, set in the kind of frame used by the ancient Greek tragedians, with a mystical ghost-fancier intimating death and a blind cat-woman predicting disaster.
Yet in content and language it is more like a Victorian or an early John B. Keane melodrama, with a fair slice of social satire on remote rural life thrown in. The mixture is rich and its texture (including the satire) is bleak and black.
The story is of a woman deprived and trapped and doomed by her up-bringing to lose whatever little she may have gained against the odds. Hester Swane was a tinker, born by the bog of cats and determined not to leave it, who has an affair and a daughter, Josie, with Carthage Kilbride who, as we meet them, is about to marry Caroline Cassidy - both of them the essence of local "respectability", she with a land-hungry father and he with a venomously selfish mother.
Hester, meanwhile, has found the frozen corpse of the black swan with whom her mother (who deserted her) used to leave her some nights to sleep. She wants to bury the bird even as the "oracles" are telling her to leave the place if she is to survive.
The main structure of the play is a series of duologues, aside from a very funny wedding party with all characters present, including the amnesic and inept Father Willow and the well-meaning but ineffective neighbour, Monica Murray. After that, the melodrama begins to win over the tragedy and the action becomes over-the-top gruesome as Hester's past sins are unveiled and she slides to her doom with young Josie.
Patrick Mason has given it a very measured pace in his direction and Nick Chelton's lighting is clear and atmospheric. The actors are both collectively (as in the wedding party) coherent and individually committed and creative.
Pauline Flanagan is strikingly and effectively unpleasant as Mrs Kilbride; Tom Hickey slyly sinister as Mr Cassidy, Caroline's greedy father. Joan O'Hara is necessarily exaggerated as Catwoman and Pat Kinevane necessarily sinister as the ghost-fancier. Pat Leavy is both decent and (at the wedding) very funny as Monica Murray while Conor McDermottroe and Fionnuala Murphy are suitably bland as the groom and bride. Siobhan Cullen or Kerrie O'Sullivan (the programme does not make clear which) was splendidly effective as 7 year old Sophie.
Eamon Kelly is vacuously hilarious as Father Willow and Ronan Leahy is less substantial as the ghost of Hester's dead brother. The emotionally charged performance of the night comes from Olwen Fouere as Hester, now wheedling, then angry, always determined and occasionally caught out acoustically by her thick accent.
But, in the end, the dramatic ingredients proved too rich to provide more than theatrical indigestion, despite all the style and the commitment and the very serious substance of the author's ambitious play. The text, well worth reading, is published by the Gallery Press.
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In the Review of Uncle Vanya in yesterday's editions, no mention was made of T.P. McKenna's excellent performance as Professor Serebryakov, Vanya's bullying brother-in-law. The error of omission was made by the reviewer and is much regretted by him.
