The Remains of Maisie Duggan review: black and bleak, absurd and appalling family drama

The Remains of Maisie Duggan ★★★
Abbey Theatre on the Peacock Stage

 There is more than a touch of Synge about Carmel Winters's The Remains of Maisie Duggan, a play in conversation with the past: the premise rests upon a corpse come back to life; the denouement comes courtesy of a farming tool repurposed as a weapon. But the echoes of Synge come via Martin McDonagh. The drama is as black and bleak, as absurd and appalling as anything written by that postmodern provocateur.

The play is set in a familiar country cottage, complete with a picture of the Sacred Heart and a statue of the Virgin Mary. However, Fly Davis’s scorched box-set, with its strange scale, evokes a bunker after a bomb: a visual metaphor for the explosive dynamic of the strange and violent family we meet. Kitty – “a nobody”, “the quare one,” “the shadow of a shadow” – has just returned from London after 20 years for her mother’s funeral. She is embraced by her simpleton brother Tadhg (Cillian Ó Gairbhí) but there is less welcome from her ferocious father, Himself (John Olohan), who hasn’t called her by name since she was 13. Dead Maisie Duggan (Bríd Ní Neachtain), meanwhile, climbs out of her grave to greet her. Rachel O’Byrne reaches deep for her performance as the complex Kitty and her conviction roots the play in tragedy, despite Winters’s comic touches and several gratuitously shocking scenes.

The production, directed by Ellen McDougall, lacks clarity in tone and setting, though the veering tone and occasional confusion contributes to the unsettling atmosphere, as does Sarah Jane Sheils's flickering fluorescent lighting scheme. By the time the final disturbing scene reaches its climax, however, Winters' cyclical purgation of the past is clear and complete. Not one for the faint of heart.
Runs on after the festival, until Oct 29
Sara Keating