Buried trauma in a psych ward
Nothing But A Toerag Bewley’s Café Theatre until Nov 23 ⋆⋆⋆
This two-hander, written by Aisling O’Mara, and first performed last January in Smock Alley, is played out in a new configuration of the small Bewley’s theatre. Some of the audience is seated on what’s usually the stage, and the opposite wall is taken up by a bunk bed. At first, the set looks vaguely like a prison, with the two characters, Bianca (Aisling O’Mara) and the unnamed A (Clare Monnelly) confronting each other; A is aggressive and possessive of her space, and Bianca more accommodating. It takes some time for them to negotiate a mutual toleration, as A interrogates Bianca about herself and her family.
But it’s always apparent that surface appearance is deceptive. There’s no immediately obvious reason why they’re both in this grey and whitecoloured world. Bianca’s background offers no explanation of why she should be locked up, and their language, initially crude, soon develops into a more sophisticated reflection on their lives, while the prison morphs into a psychiatric ward.
The short scenes are divided by brief lighting blackouts to the accompaniment of disorientating electronic noise, possibly reflecting tortured minds.
And the two inmates perform a lively dance to the strains of Fatboy Slim’s Right Here, Right Now. What finally emerges is a neat little psychological drama about buried trauma. It’s fairly soon clear where the play is going, but the writing is sharp, and it’s brilliantly played by the two performers. And it seems to leave open the possibility that the pair are a single split mind. It’s clearly too short to get into the full psychology of it all, but it’s dramatically very effective as far as it goes.