Faultless, stellar production that tears your heart out

THE PULL OF THE STARS

Gate Theatre

SLIPPERY WHEN WET

Bewleys Cafe Theatre

There are structural faults in Emma Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars which show its genesis as a novel. Happening as it does in the memory of the central character, there are “step-aside” scenes to deliver thoughts and memories that don’t quite work. But the overall theme of bounding hope in the future of a better world comes through loud, clear, and feministically, to coin a word.

At the play’s core is a tremulous, unfulfilled love story between Julia Power (Sarah Morris), an idealistic and overworked nurse in a makeshift hospital ward in Dublin during the deadly Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, and Bridie Sweeney (Ghaliah Conroy), an escapee from the nearby mother-and-baby home where she has lived all her young life.

The youngster literally rolls up her sleeves to help out in one of the many unwinding crises. Three of the women are in the late stages of pregnancy, and either have flu, or are threatened with it.

They are tended by the equally stressed and overworked Dr Kathleen Lynn (Maeve Fitzgerald), grudgingly allowed to work because of the pressure, despite her gender and her record as a convicted soldier of the 1916 rebellion.

This is a world in danger, but holding out hope over tragedy in the valiant hearts of the women O’Donoghue portrays, even when the specific hope is destined to be crushed from their bodies. Only memory will live on.

Married or not, they are all grudgingly given the respectful title of Mrs by the superintending Sister Luke (Ruth McCabe). But their only sin, according to Kathleen Lynn, is poverty.

In the scenario the play offers, the only certain hope is the pull of the stars that fascinate Julia Power.

Young Mary Tierney (Ciara Byrne) safely gives birth to a baby boy, but wonders how she will manage this every year for the future. She will not see another year.

Della Garrett (India Mullen), conspicuously middle class with her complaining tongue and elegant nightwear, gives birth to an already dead premature baby, weeping over the basinful as she admits she had not wanted this one. Until now…

Honor Noonan (Úna Kavanagh), an old hand, labours miserably and helplessly, her body racked equally horribly by the spasms of the flu. It’s hard to know which kills her.

I think I heard a single throwaway line at one stage from Kathleen Lynn: “At least I’ve made sure she won’t be back here”. Did Kathleen Lynn perform preventive surgery on some of the women presenting to her? Unlikely.

And in the background Julia and young Bridie bond over the trials, a free moment when the youngster, who has scarcely even seen sunshine, learns to identify Ursa Major, taught by the still optimistic Julia. Except she won’t go on to learn anything other than that burgeoning love. She, too, succumbs.

Director Louise Lowe adapts her outdoor style magnificently to the bounds of the stage, more than ably assisted by Alyson Cummins’s evocative set lit by Sinéad Wallace, while Joan O’Clery is responsible for the meticulously accurate costumes.

And the cast? Faultless; separately and jointly tearing your heart out.

The protagonist in Leanne Devlin’s Slippery When Wet works as a supermarket cleaner, having completed three years at drama school, which (interestingly) she refers to as “having perfected her craft”. Begob!

But she develops an hysterical pash on a fellow worker, and in pursuit of him, stops going to auditions.

Unlikely? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. What follows is an hour of long-drawn-out unlikely/unfunny/unappealing segments, including licking the adored object’s face (by accident) when he tries to kiss her, a long, graphic (and noisy) description of a Brazilian bikini wax in a beauty salon; and passing out drunk when she finally gets to bed with the object, only to wake in an empty bed and locate him in her “friend’s” bed, fully active.

The author is the actor, directed by Emma Copland, who might have helped things by telling her to stop shouting.

Slippery When Wet is revived at Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, having won the Little Gem Award at last year’s Dublin Fringe Festival. I can only think it must have been a poor year for possible subjects. It felt more like two hours than one.