Baglady

REVIEW:Focus Theatre, Dublin

“What I see I have to say,” the protagonist of Frank McGuinness’ moving monologue play repeats like a mantra as she sifts through the detritus of her troubled past and moves towards a revelation of the terrifying events that shaped her life. With a pack of cards and a bottle of red lemonade, she tells her own fortune, but it is really her history she is sharing with us; a history of un-nameable crimes.

Barbara Bradshaw’s set is a suggestion of trees; rag-trees that are sculpted from the symbols of her past: shards of a cracked looking glass, filthy playing cards, rusted chains. It is an impressively complex representation of Baglady’s subconscious rendered in stark simplicity; a symbolic thicket of a dark fairytale and a nightmare childhood.

The battle McGuinness’ play fights is to find coherence in Baglady’s madness. Maria McDermottroe, desexualised in a dark bulky clothing and black woollen hat, brings a loose circular structure to Baglady’s rambling musings. As she moves around the stage in heavy boots, she is the shadow of her oppressor, her father. “Is she a woman at all?” his ghost asks her. She is not anymore. She doesn’t even have a name. She is defined now by her status as wandering vagrant. She is defined by the repressed memories of her abuse.

On opening night Caroline Fitzgerald’s production at the newly refurbished Focus Theatre had yet to find its peak. The pace was slightly uncertain and McDermottroe’s movement seemed at times to be a mnemonic for lines she was not quite yet comfortable with. The intensity was thus not quite as fierce as it needs to be. There are two moments where McDermottroe issues a deep visceral roar, but the whole play is one long extended grief-cry really. Perhaps this rare production of McGuinness’ unusual play will achieve this concentrated force as it further evolves.

Runs until August 21st