REVIEW: Revenge (Project, Dublin)
No matter what the title might lead you to believe, Michael Duke's Revenge amounts to a dramatic inquiry into the possibility of truth and reconciliation. It is a play that poses massive questions about whether it is any more achievable to escape the past than it is to undo it, and imagines what the survivors will do with their fractured lives if neither is possible.
A terrible wrong has been done against one home in the North of Ireland. Specific references are few, but there is little doubt we are living in the aftermath of another in the catalogue of grim wrongs in a bad war. It is the suffering that counts rather than the flavour of politics that inspired it. And that suffering is so acute that nobody in the drama seems sure whether they are among the survivors, or the dead.
A wedding has been interrupted by a bomb, the young groom left blind and lame, his bride apparently killed in the explosion. But this anchor on the narrative only slowly becomes visible after we have spent some time in the company of a father and a mother (Kieran Ahern and Marcella Riordan).
Their marriage is clearly crumbling under the onslaught of grief and anger, when an old woman (superbly played Barbara Adair) arrives apparently offering some way out of their despair: a route which involves a kind of revenge.
It takes a fair portion of the first half even to come to grips with the theatrical language being spoken on stage. But as things move on that sense of disorientation begins to seem perfectly justified. Why after all given the emotional dark forest into which the characters have walked should the audience expect an old fashioned map?
Director, Anna Newell and designer, Stuart Marshall have created a stage which is physically sparse, allowing netherworldly atmosphere and busy lighting to lead the way. It is an approach that pays dividends, leaving the territory clear for some magnificent, wrenching performances.
Neil Martin’s music is used, perhaps, to give one more turn to the screw than is quite fair (hardened critics hardly like to be caught snuffling in the aisles). Duke’s writing never for a moment needs that extra twist, that extra comma even. It is glorious, fearless stuff, confidently shifting from colloquial banter to unworldly oratory without ever seeming in doubt of its next tone or half tone.
Duke’s rare ability to integrate an almost antique heightened language into his drama also lets him create theatre that is didactic to a degree now almost always uncomfortable for audiences. Only a production with extraordinary finesse could get away with blaring out its message so loudly; that, and one that is so clearly speaking something that resounds like truth.
A terrible wrong has been done against one home in the North of Ireland. Specific references are few, but there is little doubt we are living in the aftermath of another in the catalogue of grim wrongs in a bad war. It is the suffering that counts rather than the flavour of politics that inspired it. And that suffering is so acute that nobody in the drama seems sure whether they are among the survivors, or the dead.
A wedding has been interrupted by a bomb, the young groom left blind and lame, his bride apparently killed in the explosion. But this anchor on the narrative only slowly becomes visible after we have spent some time in the company of a father and a mother (Kieran Ahern and Marcella Riordan).
Their marriage is clearly crumbling under the onslaught of grief and anger, when an old woman (superbly played Barbara Adair) arrives apparently offering some way out of their despair: a route which involves a kind of revenge.
It takes a fair portion of the first half even to come to grips with the theatrical language being spoken on stage. But as things move on that sense of disorientation begins to seem perfectly justified. Why after all given the emotional dark forest into which the characters have walked should the audience expect an old fashioned map?
Director, Anna Newell and designer, Stuart Marshall have created a stage which is physically sparse, allowing netherworldly atmosphere and busy lighting to lead the way. It is an approach that pays dividends, leaving the territory clear for some magnificent, wrenching performances.
Neil Martin’s music is used, perhaps, to give one more turn to the screw than is quite fair (hardened critics hardly like to be caught snuffling in the aisles). Duke’s writing never for a moment needs that extra twist, that extra comma even. It is glorious, fearless stuff, confidently shifting from colloquial banter to unworldly oratory without ever seeming in doubt of its next tone or half tone.
Duke’s rare ability to integrate an almost antique heightened language into his drama also lets him create theatre that is didactic to a degree now almost always uncomfortable for audiences. Only a production with extraordinary finesse could get away with blaring out its message so loudly; that, and one that is so clearly speaking something that resounds like truth.
posted by luke clancy at 4:11 PM
.jpg)
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home