I (Heart) Alice (Heart) I

Peacock Theatre, Dublin

In all their years together, Alice Slattery and Alice Kinsella have never sought exposure. If anything, the two lovers in their 60s who greet us uncertainly from the stage would rather stay hidden. Wearing expressions of mild shock and slight embarrassment, they’re an unlikely couple to ever agree to be in a piece of documentary theatre, a form in which real people tell their stories directly to an audience. But, then again, HotForTheatre’s artful and touching exploration of their relationship is all about the power of persuasion.

When the play premiered in the Absolut Fringe in 2010, writer and director Amy Conroy seemed keen to preserve the feint that these were real people, before realising that it was unimportant. Documentary theatre trades on a fidgeting sense of authenticity, a style in which non-actors recite litanies of text, leave the artifice of theatre exposed, and share genuine stories with the audience as freely as they do photographs or baked goods. Instead, Conroy elegantly subverts these methods. Played by Conroy and Clare Barrett, the two Alices are fictitious, but their story rings with a sense of honesty. Whether we are moved by the sense of real-life detail or the clear manipulation of art, we are still moved. Conroy has her cake, eats it and shares it with the audience.

A love affair with deep roots but late blooms, now settling into cosy domesticity, the women’s story is not intended to be extraordinary – rather, their telling it is significant and Conroy renders their lives in brilliant detail. Kinsella’s verbal tics are as vivid as her amusingly tangled sexual awakening in 1960s London; Slattery’s nerve-jangling driving is related as keenly as her abiding respect for her deceased husband, and they speak volumes in brushes of support or glances of reproach.

Such eye for detail is the sublime talent of both playwright and documentarian, and in performance it requires acute sensitivity. As Kinsella, Conroy captures the ebb and flow of assurance in the merest gestures, while Clare Barrett, as Slattery, finds poetry in hesitance: a fetchingly suppressed smile, the meeting or missing of Conroy’s eyes. When the show gathers in emotional heft, adding stories of illness, betrayal and reconciliation, it steadily reveals the deepening layers of a personal narrative with a political purpose.

Both Alices have inherited a culture of shame, where homosexuality has been ignored, repudiated or described only in euphemisms. In one passing, painful moment, the devout Slattery even admits to praying for forgiveness. Here, they do not shy from challenging the unequal legal status for same-sex couples, yet Conroy’s piece is most affecting because it understands the importance of recognition, whether it’s the trigger of detail, the curiosity of a supermarket snoop or the empathy of theatre audience. Weighing up the pros and cons of taking part in the performance, the Alices put it succinctly: “We will be seen.” They really should be – and believed too.

Runs until February 18