A dysfunctional family makes for explosive theatre...
Tribes (Gate Theatre, which is ostensibly about deafness, throws up a whole world of dysfunctional behaviour and misjudgement. How do you behave towards somebody who is deaf or otherwise disabled? And what effect will your efforts have if you’re not properly tuned into what people actually need? Are words always necessary to know what somebody is thinking? Nina Raine’s play is by turn outrageously funny, disturbing, eye-opening and finally a gruelling exercise in emotional flagellation. It presents an educated, gifted but unbalanced family in which the individuals hurl abuse at each other as a means of expressing their individuality, but never use language to engage properly with each other. Father Chris (Nick Dunning) is an academic critic with a distaste for humanity, mother (Fiona Bell) is attempting a detective novel with an unlikely theme, the mentally disturbed Daniel is writing a thesis on the uselessness of words, the daughter is a would-be opera singer and the youngest, Billy (Alex Nowak), is deaf from birth, isolated and excluded from much of the family bickering. He has been treated as a normal individual by concentrating on lip reading, and avoiding sign language, which would imprison him in a restrictive sub-culture. The entrance of Sylvia as a love interest for Billy complicates things. She’s going deaf but learning sign language, a third layer in the communication chain. And she’s now a perfect subject for academic deconstruction. The second half narrows the focus and introduces a plot element that seems artificial as a means to a neat ending. The stage comes alive in a brutal three-way session of recrimination between Billy, his family and Sylvia (Clare Dunne), using video, dialogue, sign language and surtitles for spoken and unspoken comments, that explode in a firecracker piece of theatrical confrontation. The occasional difficulty in understanding what’s being said simply forces the audience to become part of the conflict. Runs until November 11.