This absurdly powerful drama could be the hit of Edinburgh
One of the two ‘professionals’ who come to see him is dressed as a lobster
Following the grim hiatus of 2020, the Edinburgh International Festival is making a careful and tentative return to stages across the city. This means that the flagship play, Medicine, by the acclaimed Irish dramatist Enda Walsh, is being presented (thanks to Scottish Government protocols) to much reduced, physically distanced, mask-wearing audiences at the Traverse Theatre.
Walsh (the writer of such plays as Disco Pigs and Lazarus, which he co-authored with David Bowie), was the toast of the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe with his blistering dark comedy The Walworth Farce. His new piece, about the medical confinement of a man who has been diagnosed with psychosis, deserves to be equally revered.
Directed by Walsh himself for Dublin-based theatre company Landmark Productions and the Galway International Arts Festival, Medicine takes place in the gymnasium of a psychiatric hospital. There, in-patient John Kane (Domhnall Gleeson, outstanding) finds himself surrounded (on designer Jamie Vartan’s excellent set) by the detritus of the previous night’s staff party.
It is an inauspicious start to what is, presumably, supposed to be an important part of his treatment. John (who, it seems, has been sectioned) is preparing to give his “testimony” to two professionals who have been brought to meet him.
However, in the first of many brilliantly absurd twists, these two are not consultant psychiatrists but a couple of peripatetically employed musical theatre performers, both called Mary. Mary 1 (the wonderfully explosive Aoife Duffin) arrives from her previous gig in the guise of two old men. Mary 2 (Clare Barrett on barnstorming form) is en route to a children’s party, and shows up in a lobster costume.
This conceit is unlikely to be an ironic comment on “drama therapy”. More plausibly, it serves Walsh’s imaginative leap into a quasi-surreal situation that reflects the not-sobenign neglect of John’s physical and pharmaceutical confinement. (John, meanwhile, is so institutionalised that he agrees with the external, male voice of authority – which we all hear – that his incarceration is justified.)
Walsh’s past work has drawn comparisons with the plays of Ionesco, the father of absurdist drama. Medicine can only serve to reconfirm that perception. As with Ionesco’s plays such as The Chairs, Walsh’s latest piece is constructed of bleakly funny repetition. Much of the comedy comes in the increasingly violent conflict between the Marys (who in fact have the script of John’s testimony in their hands), and in composer Teho Teardo’s fabulously diverse use of music. However, also as with Ionesco, there is something deeper going on beneath the surface.
The play’s strong emotional undertow turns to powerful, resonating poetics in a series of Beckett-esque monologues in which John recalls episodes from his past life and lost love. In these moments, Gleeson (of Ex Machina and the recent Star Wars films fame) gives a performance that is nothing short of soul-shuddering. We have watched John blithely accept the medication that deadens his senses. In the monologues, however, he breaks the hold of the chemical cosh, dredging up years of pain and regret from the depths of his being.
It’s still very early, but Medicine may well turn out to be the finest theatre production in Edinburgh this summer.