Author Donal Ryan has a present for eliciting sympathy even for his characters’ misdeeds. In a brand new stage adaptation of his Costa-shortlisted novel, the primary speaker we're launched to, John (Lorcan Cranitch), is looking for forgiveness for a lifetime of meanness, cruelty – and worse. It's a lot to ask.
For this co-production between Decadent theatre firm and Galway Arts Centre, the script was developed by Ryan, together with director Andrew Flynn and the spectacular solid of 4, and retains the lyricism of the novel.
In a sequence of separate monologues unfolding over two hours, 4 characters in a small Irish city attempt to make their peace with painful pasts. For Syrian physician Farouk (Aosaf Afzal), reminiscences of his spouse and daughter who drowned on their treacherous journey in a migrant boat trigger him responsible himself. In the meantime John, a property proprietor and shady monetary vendor, recollects previous bullying and the younger lady he tried to coerce by way of obsessive love. Cranitch brings a bitter notice of self-loathing to his confessions, spitting out the time period he had used to explain his function as a blackmailing intermediary: “a lobbyist”.
Florence (Maeve Fitzgerald) anxiously watches over her son, Lampy (Darragh O’Toole), as if attempting to compensate for the absent father he by no means knew; Lampy nurses a damaged coronary heart for his old flame whereas questioning find out how to escape from the city and his bus-driving job at a care dwelling. For all his frustrations, his bravado and comedian working commentary on his aged passengers lighten the in any other case sombre tone.
On a stripped picket stage with designer Ger Sweeney’s summary backdrop and Ciaran Bagnall’s lighting evoking the ocean and vast sky, there's little to distract from the performances. These are delicate and sometimes gripping, because the successive monologues construct to create character research, some sketchier than others. But the connection between them doesn't reveal itself till the top, when all 4 characters are lastly on stage collectively, in a placing tableau. Somewhat than an “aha” second, this feels a little bit rushed, in order that as an alternative of highlighting the wealthy threads of connection between disparate lives, the lingering impression is extra of isolation.
At Nun’s Island theatre, Galway, till 24 July, as a part of Galway worldwide arts competition.
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