Dublin Theatre Festival dives into the Irish literary canon

The most impressive work in this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival is also the most formally traditional. Tom Murphy’s A Whistle in the Dark at the Abbey Theatre (to November 5) centres on a family of warring Irish immigrants in Teddy Boy-era Coventry. Structured as a classical tragedy, the 1961 eight-hander combines the pathos of Sophocles and Shakespeare with the bloody mayhem of Jacobean drama. Though violence lurks throughout the near three-hour running time (with an interval), the dominant note of Jason Byrne’s staging is one of blistering yet methodically paced tension.

Anchoring that achievement is a textured central performance from Seán McGinley as the degraded paterfamilias Dada, whose arrival on a visit from County Mayo sets the wheels of doom in motion. At first blandly courteous and self-effacing, this pound-shop King Lear quickly ditches his veneer of civility and goads his five sons towards a climactic street fight. By turns risibly pretentious and sadistically cruel, the role could lend itself to overblown villainy. But McGinley deftly shifts between aggression and a feeble, befuddled tone that mines the comedy in Dada’s chronically inarticulate monologues.

As eldest son Michael, Peter Coonan conveys the turmoil of a man who has sufficient strength of character to repudiate his family’s brutality yet not enough to break free. There are also accomplished performances from Sarah Morris as his long-suffering English wife Betty and Ruairí Heading as smarmy hanger-on Mush. The ill-fated ingenuousness of youngest son Des seems especially poignant in James Doherty O’Brien’s performance. Peter Claffey and Timmy Creed supply imposing background muscle as the family dunces Iggy and Hugo.

The latter live in thrall to Michael’s chief antagonist Harry, a small-time criminal and noxious chip off Dada’s block. Brian Gleeson captures the character’s tightly coiled rage, but his portrayal seems to be missing a layer of menace. Some choreographic missteps also undermine the power of the grisly final scene. This Whistle nonetheless brims with a visceral sense of claustrophobia that is complemented by the cramped squalor of Cordelia Chisholm’s design. ★★★★☆

Confinement is also a hallmark of the promenade works devised by the multidisciplinary company ANU. These have been a fixture of the festival for more than a decade. This year’s offering consists of two overlapping 50-minute performances inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses in the centenary of its publication.

At the start of Lolling (to October 21), created by Louise Lowe and Owen Boss, we are ushered into the basement of a pub opposite Sweny’s pharmacy (where Leopold Bloom buys a bar of lemon soap). There we encounter a barman (Jamie O’Neill) with a gambling problem and an adman (John Cronin) with a drinking problem. Having spent the night sleeping on a banquette, he nonetheless manages to rehearse a winningly offbeat marketing pitch about the virtues of lotus flower tea (in a nod to the “Lotus-Eaters” episode of Ulysses). The mood then darkens as the barman ducks out of sight to escape a high-strung delivery man (Matthew Williamson), who is owed money (another Joycean motif).

These sombre high-jinks succeed in evoking some of the stresses and pathologies of contemporary Dublin life. But the connections with Ulysses remain a bit tenuous, and the ending, which features a distraught customer (Robbie O’Connor), strikes a melodramatic note that jars with the spirit of the novel. ★★★☆☆

The latter character reappears in All Hardest of Woman (to October 22), where we find him vainly seeking news of his pregnant wife inside the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street (the setting for Mrs Purefoy’s agonising labour in Ulysses). Created by Lowe in collaboration with Emilie Pine, the performance includes four other characters who tell disjointed tales of infertility, hardship and burnout that sketch a nightmarish portrait of the health service. They might well have a point, but the unleavened miserabilism feels strenuous. And, here again, there are few cogent echoes of Joyce’s ultimately redemptive novel. ★★☆☆☆

In The Realistic Joneses (to October 16) at the Smock Alley Theatre, Will Eno offers a more balanced yet decidedly loopy slice of experimental drama set in a mountainous part of the US. The titular Joneses are visited one evening by their new, younger neighbours, also helpfully called Jones. Whereas the former speak and behave in a normal, realistic style, the latter, like many Eno characters, converse in batty non-sequiturs and contradictions.

Initially unimpressed by such effrontery, Bob (a splendidly dyspeptic Joe Spano) gradually takes a shine to Faline England’s bubbleheaded Pony and starts to emulate the erratic affect of her husband John (Conor Lovett). Meanwhile, Bob’s endlessly tolerant wife Jennifer (Sorcha Fox) resists this tide of nonsense and sticks to realist convention.

Judy Hegarty Lovett’s two-hour staging could doubtless be trimmed. But the clash of theatrical styles makes for an intellectually pleasing exercise. The play ultimately offers a nimble demonstration that actions speak louder than words. ★★★★☆

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