The Hare: A journey made in hope becomes a tour of bruising collisions

The Hare

Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire

★★★☆☆

In a world where people are relentlessly disappointing, and their etiquette absurd, it’s no wonder the girl in The Hare prefers a retreat into imagination. Walking miles of empty fields and lanes, she speaks to different voices in her head as imaginary friends – including her absent father, whom she never met. In a fantasy tale evoking another long-eared mammal, she might end up falling down a rabbit hole.

There is a hint of Lewis Carroll to Clare Monnelly and Bob Kelly’s intriguing playscript for this Once Off production, which, in its earthy and unsentimental version of coastal Ireland, is set in no wonderland. The girl, played by Úna Ní Bhriain, roams a jagged, pre-internet countryside of fairy forts and God-fearing “inlanders”, avoiding a depressed mother’s complaints about her “bad buck” of a father and the cruel taunts of classmates. In the quiet aftermath of a shouting standoff with an adversary, she hears the return of a folky melody (performed live by the former Waterboys musician Steve Wickham). “Run on ahead,” she says, speaking to the music. Could this sound actually be a hare, the same one she spots perching on her windowsill?

Certain things are open for interpretation, at the risk of being too open-ended. During a classroom astronomy debate on spotting the Orion constellation, she’s certain in what she sees in the night sky, even if she’s scientifically incorrect: “Your own nonsense is the world you live in.” That seems an explicit nod to Carroll’s literary genre, but it may also leave more questions than answers.

The narrative propulsion comes when she discovers a letter written by her father, who wishes to meet her across the fields, at an old bridge. That sounds like a foot-stomping quest from playwright-actors whose past, nimbly physical performances have recently settled into a subtler weave of voices (in Monnelly’s media satire Minefield and Kelly’s prison drama Tintown). Here there is Wickham’s uptempo music, the squelching footsteps of Joe Hunt’s sound design and the playscript’s references to passing scenery. Yet, in Kelly’s painstaking production as director, Ní Bhriain is confined to a patch of grassy, cragged earth.

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What originally seemed a journey made in hope instead becomes a tour of bruising collisions, as memories of school embarrassments build a sad depiction of child neglect. In the crushing shock of a child prank, Ní Bhriain’s face widens into a picture of disbelief, before unleashing a scream. “You only heard me whimper,” she says defiantly, as if finding her voice in the piercing cry.

If that is some suggestion of self-expression, it is awkwardly followed by gruesome events. Though the grisly metamorphosis towards the play’s conclusion may insist on imagination as a survival strategy for isolation, it’s unclear what escape it offers. (Those who were around a decade ago will remember Genevieve Hulme-Beaman’s Pondling as covering similar ground, asking questions about the getaways and consequences of child fantasy.) Without making a run for it, The Hare seems to end up in a trap.

The Hare moves to Cork Arts Theatre from Thursday, July 13th, to Saturday, July 15th