In both plays presented, Pam Ella and Cat Melodeon, the circumstances of author Alice Barry's heroines can be traced back to childhoods fraught with more than the usual share of grief. That both Pam and Cat, respectively, meet different ends points to the development of the playwright's voice as she walks the fine line between soulfulness and sentimentality, with mixed results.
Cat Melodeon charts the course of the life of orphan Catherine Casey, from her solitary motherless infancy to her fatherless childhood. Having lacked the influence of the feminine early on, her life experience is defined by the encounters she has with the men she meets, and throughout she is unfailingly gung-ho and exceedingly verbose. Diane O'Keefee, as Cat, and Jonathan Shankey, as the rest of the cast of characters, make the journey enjoyable. Yet, as a whole, the distilled life story of the young woman comes across as an uneasy blend of cheeky song-and-dance numbers and great chunks of intellectual discourse that compromise the dramatic tension.
Conversely, PamElla treads darker territory, as fatherless Pam (he's never mentioned) - born in Cork to a theatrical mother, sister to a theatrical brother, and told early on that she herself is talentless - emigrates to England to get a life. She sings, dances, tells us the story of her apparent affair with one of the partners at the law firm in which she works, and her gift for impersonations is entertaining, until the story takes a turn that exposes the sickness behind her sadness.
Raymond Keane directs the author herself in a precisely physical and energetic performance, and Steven Neale's stark set and lighting design brilliantly reflect the shifting tones of the piece. Texturally satisfying, the end result is a sad, sexy, disturbing piece of theatre.