The Summer I Robbed a Bank review: A riot of inspired fun as David O’Doherty’s children’s book becomes stage show

The Summer I Robbed a Bank

Everyman Theatre Cork

★★★★☆

The joys of this Everyman presentation arise from the notions that Rex is exclusively a dog’s name and that a bank safe can be unlocked with a hairdryer. The Summer I Robbed a Bank, which Mark Doherty has adapted from the children’s book by his brother, the comedian David O’Doherty, has a hero, young Rex, who arrives on a reluctant visit to Achill Island armed only with a teenager’s weapons of a hoodie and earbuds. He is also vulnerable to the jokes about canine characteristics to which the otherwise friendly islanders are addicted.

The production unreels as if Roald Dahl had taken a lawnmower to Sesame Street. That children’s television series might come to mind as suspended clouds respond colourfully to events on a set built like the ground floor of a ziggurat, as it might also in the element of innocence in the writing and the playing, which captivates the young audience. Disbelief is instantly suspended for landscapes of hills and villages slipping past the windows of a train; for handbrake turns on precipitous mountain roads; for sleeting rain defying the plans of Rex, his Uncle Derm and his new friend Kitty; and for the absurd ubiquity of sheep.

Beneath the pace and hilarity of the action lies a narrative in which the ruined castle of the pirate Grace O’Malley is to be sold to developers rather than restored as Rex and Kitty intend – the motivation for the robbery. Even in an age when protest is popular this is a theme too weighty for a performance where the production skills are typified by effects in which the sound comes a third of a beat after the event causing it. That’s not new, but it’s perfect in its accuracy and in its comic efficiency. We get it, and we don’t quite catch O’Malley, although there is a final image of her castle, re-roofed with thatch, somewhere at a distance.

A cast of four provides a community of eight, with Damian Kearney carrying five roles alongside Bryan Quinn’s Uncle Derm, Stephen O’Leary’s Rex and Orla Scally’s Kitty. There are weaknesses: Scally’s light voice occasionally misses the necessary emphasis; there’s a drift towards the end of the show, as if the hectic energy is running down; and, especially, there’s a tender but inexplicable interlude of song that seems to have no context.

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That cavilling aside, this is a delightfully creative and innovative display of stagecraft, using video and lighting with a glee that enchants an audience largely too young to be aware of the behind-the-scenes skills of Sarah Jane Shiels, Neil O’Driscoll, Patrick Lehane and Arran MacGabhann, not to mention Sophie Motley, the production’s director, who puts structure and control on a riot of inspired fun.

The Summer I Robbed a Bank is at the Everyman, as part of Cork Midsummer Festival, on Saturday, June 15th, and Sunday, June 16th