Thebig guns deliver in style
Weaving and Fouéré make up for this two-star satire
That star rating needs some explaining. It’s a four-star production of a two-star play by the distinguished Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard ( 1931-1989). It’s essentially two monologues of an hour each, given by the two main characters; First Lady (Olwen Fouéré) in the first half, and by the President (Hugo Weaving), after the break. There are occasional, very brief contributions by six other members of the cast. Bernhard detested everything about pre-war, war-time and post-war Austria, because of its Nazi history and his experiences as a child growing up there,
Fouéré’s performance is quite breathtaking in its stamina and range. Long monologues are usually written with space to relax and pause allowing periods of quiet reflection. Here, the part demands nuance and machine-gun delivery. But the repetitive nature of the writing becomes satirical overkill. Hugo Weaving, with his presidential overload, handles his
FOUéRé’S STAMINA AND RANGE ARE BREATHTAKING ...WEAVING IS SKILFUL IN ROLE
role with skilful confidence despite having fewer opportunities for dramatic development..
The two characters carry the total dramatic emphasis of the play, set in some unnamed country that can be any place dominated by an authoritarian regime that handles opposition with brutal oppression.
The pair have been targets of a failed assassination attempt. But the president’s bodyguard and the First Lady’s dog were killed. For her, it’s bad enough that her son has become an anarchist, and her husband was almost killed, but the death of her dog is unbearably tragic. She’s positively deranged in her grief, declaiming relentlessly over their exceptional life of service to the country, while continuing to have her hair rearranged and her muscles massaged.
Olwen Fouéré has the advantage of a silent but self-assured, servant, Mrs Frolick (Julie Forsyth) to play against, who’s wearing a marvellously inappropriate red gown, to develop the comic aspects of the play, while the president guffaws like a jackass offstage at regular intervals.
But listening to somebody endlessly repeating the same woes is hardly more entertaining onstage than hearing about the real thing. We quickly grasp the shock effect for this woman suddenly facing unexpected opposition.
The dramatic problem is worse when the scene changes to Portugal and we hear the president’s drunken monologue to his young mistress.
She’s initially chirpy but very quickly she’s bored stiff, even when he’s complimenting her on her talents as an actress. Point made: he’s an incurably self-obsessed, dictator, totally absorbed in his own greatness. In the following scene when he’s with a group of officers and diplomats, he’s off waffling again while they fail to get a word in.
He even wanders into the selfcomplimentary world of comparing art and politics.
The set makes intriguing use of mirrors, suggesting a fragility about the surroundings and the lives involved, and giving an effect of people always looking at themselves, while the unusual ending lets the whole audience in on the act.
It all has the ring of truth about it, but the structure doesn’t lend itself to great drama. W.H. Auden’s lines in Epitaph On A Tyrant sum up characters like the President in very simple language.
‘The poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
When he laughed, respected senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried, little children died in the streets.’
The hugely successful novel The Making of Mollie, written and adapted for the stage for ages 8+ by Anna Carey, comes to The Ark Children’s Cultural Centre from February 23 to March 16.
The play covers women’s rights and the often superior status of boys in families. In the Dublin of 1912, 14-year-old Mollie Carbery’s life is pretty boring, until she finds that her older sister Phyllis is a secret suffragette. Mollie wants to do something about this unfair world, so when she and her friend Nora get involved in the movement for women’s rights, they must face the question of how far a girl should go for her beliefs. The cast includes Ashleigh Dorrell, who plays Mollie; Nora McAllister, as Nora; Eyum Pricilla as Phyllis; Ian Toner as Harry and Rowan Finken as Frank.
There will be a relaxed performance on Friday March 8 at
10.15am and 12.15pm, as well as on Saturday March 9 at 2pm. Meanwhilw an ISL performance takes place on Sunday March 3 at 4pm. All booking details at ark. ticketsolve.com.