IS IT TOO LATE FOR SISTERS TO MAKE PEACE?
Bereavement and break-ups underpin a fraught lunch where nothing is off the menu
Happiness Then... Bewley’s Cafe Theatre U ntil March 9 ★★★☆☆
The two alienated sisters in Elizabeth Moynihan’s new play get straight down to the business of unintentionally annoying each other for nearly an hour. Frances (Sorcha Furlong) has invited Bridget to a restaurant for a long overdue reconciliation following the death of their mother. Bridget is fractionally late. Bad start.
Frances, in a constant state of irritation, is kept going by alcohol and cynical remarks about life in general and the disappointing disposal of their dead mother’s money. As well as that she’s understandably grumpy about her own
‘Lots of emotion and enough subject matter for a full-length drama’
husband’s decision to transition into a female, an up-to-date variation on the ‘other woman’ theme. The break-up of Bridget’s family is more routine.
Frances drinks wine throughout the meeting, suggesting her bladder might determine the length of the show, but she has plenty of capacity, and Bridget, who doesn’t drink, has her own problems.
The play is essentially a family melodrama with modern themes and occasional humour, aimed at piling lots of emotion into a onehour play that has enough subject matter for a full-length drama, with no pretentious structure to get in the way. Bridget (Rachael Dowling) has to wait a long time to give her own problems an airing.
There’s no gentle easing into the sisters’ individual predicaments, no casual conversation that slowly unveils hidden facts about the two of them. Problems are spelt out in blunt language, which is surprising considering the play is set in a public place and the topics include sex change, HRT, childlessness, infidelity, destructive drug-taking, guilt, and lots of angry responses to each other. Discretion is certainly not on the lunch menu. I presume that having some of the audience seated onstage is to emphasise the public nature of the sisterly get-together.
Bridget has difficult family problems that would make a one-acter in itself, and she has no sympathy with her sister’s fondness for drink and generally disordered life. The two performers spark crisply off each other with sisterly severity in their contrasting roles, yet despite the confrontations, the play manages to end skilfully on a rare note of quiet understatement.
Yet another sibling clash
There’s another sibling clash in Ideal World by Isobel Mahon, which runs at The Viking Theatre at The Sheds, Clontarf (tomorrow until Saturday, March 16, excluding Sundays, 8pm). It’s a comedy about Merce, a women in her fifties, dealing with her mother’s death by immersing herself in IDEAL WORLD, a TV shopping channel. Her sister disapproves but for Merce it’s a virtual escape. But things change when she meets Ted, a widower, at a bereavement survivors support group. They set out to uncover a long-kept secret, prompting them to step outside their comfort zones.
With Isobel Mahon, Donagh Deeney, Rose Henderson and the voice of Georgia Bealtaine.
… and more family secrets
Marina Carr’s latest play, Audrey Or Sorrow, currently running at The Abbey (until March 30), is described as a ‘dark and dangerously funny production in which nothing is as it seems’. It promises to bring audiences on a ‘shape-shifting, time-bending, dive into a world of family secrets, unimaginable loss and ghosts behaving badly’.