Paul Mercier's new play for The Passion Machine is an extraordinarily clever construction of seven consecutive monologues delivered by seven people who came to young adulthood in the time of such television series as The Man from Uncle and Mission Impossible, who worked together for a time in a factory in Germany before moving to Eindhoven in what they called Dopeland and then separated out to develop their individual lives and careers.
The monologues take us from the time Sarah and Declan walked the strand at Booterstown and then up by Baker's Corner to Dean's Grange and the 46A bus, to the day of Sarah's funeral when Declan (now Deaglan) is a senior civil servant in Brussels and the Celtic Tiger is on the rampage.
The first monologue is Sarah's, (Pia McInerney), youthful and romantic and in search of fulfilment. The second is from Mikey (Conor Byrne), the schoolteacher who never knew terror until he came to fill in as music teacher to class 5C, and who is a bit older and maybe on the verge of disillusion. The third is from Una, (Gabrielle Breathnach), dedicated to theatre, an art in which she seems unlikely to succeed), and the fourth from Aonghus (Gerry McCann), gay, living in what he calls Sodom City, fixated on Batman and Robin and determined to be a marching baton-twirling majorette in the New York St Patrick's Day parade.
Then there is Eimear (Gail Fitzpatrick), an unhappy lawyer, wife and mother in a recently custom-built Georgian mansion, and bionic Pip (David Gorry) who is very much into computers and not much into anything else and, finally, a very drunk Deaglan (Liam Carney) who has missed his plane from Dublin to Brussels after Sarah's cremation and is asking the Kosovan night porter in his hotel to give him an early call to catch the morning flight out.
Under the direction of the author and Jean O'Dwyer, the acting is excellent throughout as each player adds a bit of personal history to the tale of what happened to the original group and a bit of general history by way of attitude to goings-on in Ireland. The pace throughout is break-neck: so fast, indeed, that several touching moments get trampled by the speed, and many excellent glancing jokes get lost in the rush. A little variation in pace might add to the emotional impact and enliven the humour. Great demands are made on the audience by the need to concentrate on every word and line as the kaleidoscopic picture flashes past of both a changing Ireland and seven changing people.
But the sharp attention required is rewarded by the always affectionate, sometimes irritated and occasionally angry passion that Mercier has invested in his text which runs, unchecked by an interval, for two-and-a-quarter hours. Recommended.
Runs in Dublin until Saturday May 20th (booking 016097788). Then: Belltable, Limerick next week; Cork Opera House the week after; Town Hall, Galway, June 6th-10th; An Grianan, Letterkenny, 12th-17th; Watergate, Kilkenny, 20th-24th
