Colfer captures the chill of middle age
My Real Life Assembly Hall
Has Eoin Colfer, author of the hugely successful Artemis Fowl fantasy series, actually read all the Harry Potter books? There’s a teasing gag in My Real Life, his debut stage-play, in which the Wexford man sitting before us, Noel O’brien, setting down his final thoughts before death, confesses to having something “serious weighing down on my soul… I never finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix… It seemed a bit Quidditch-heavy, so I got the DVD when it came out. Apologies to all concerned. JK herself included.”
Actually, there are lots of moments such as this in My Real Life that make you smile. In Don Wycherley’s mellifluous performance, directed by Ben Barnes, Noel oozes a gregarious charm, his ceaseless blarney conducted in the direction of an old-fashioned tape-recorder; 75 minutes of chat-filled solitude.
He’d be great down the pub, but here he is – still in his early forties, asking his best friend Richard to listen carefully to his funeral arrangements. This MS sufferer (loosely inspired by a chipper friend of Colfer’s who has the same condition) has to hold down one hand from twitching uncontrollably, with one arm limp and useless. He has had enough, dreads what’s to come. Halfway in, he’ll start gulping down bottles of pills, and later, his eyes will go glazed, his voice woozy and that machine will click with a terrifying finality.
With its look back in mocking memory at his younger, awkward self and keening regret for the lost love of his life – the beautiful Rose, her bared left shoulder at a long-ago ceilidh still driving him wild all the years later – the monologue inevitably recalls Krapp’s Last Tape. But where Beckett’s masterpiece has the saving grace of being about an old man from another era – allowing a comforting distance – Noel’s reference-points will send a chill down the spine of anyone who has reached middle age (Colfer is 52).
‘Don Wycherley’s Noel has a gregarious charm; 75 minutes of chat-filled solitude’
Noel is wiping over an old recording of the Thompson Twins’ song We Are Detective, glancing back in affectionate embarrassment at Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw. “It’s too late to change what I listened to.” All that tinny pop is there in his head alongside dread thoughts of hellfire – “The fear of a god I don’t believe in”.
“If I could teach you one thing, it’s that you should cherish every moment,” he offers. A tired old piece of wisdom, perhaps, but one that finds new life here. Prepare to shed a tear. Until Aug 27. Tickets: 0131 623 3030; edfringe.com