The marketing campaign
for the recent film About Schmidt
made a fairly melancholic study of an older man’s slow realization of his many small
failures in life look like a knockabout feel-good comedy. Scenes which in context formed
part of an intimate psychological and emotional character study were arranged in the
trailer as if they were sock-it-to-em punchlines. A similar fate has befallen Morris
Panych’s Auntie & Me, a retitled production of his 1990s play Vigil.
Arriving in Dublin after a run in London’s West End, it is described in the
advertising as a "smash hit comedy," bearing endorsements from British
newspapers testifying to its hilarity. Auntie & Me is a two-hander featuring a misanthropic loner
who has come to visit his Aunt, who is supposedly at death’s door. As he rants and
raves about the miseries of his upbringing in which the elderly lady played too small a
part for his taste, she lies quietly in her bed, never speaking, always observing and
responding to his thoughts with small gestures and facial expressions. A year goes by
during which the woman seems to be getting better. The man becomes increasingly
frustrated, and moves from making funeral plans to helpful suggestions for ways to speed
up the process of her demise, including electrocution, death by bludgeoning, and poisoned
butterscotch pudding.
Yes there are humorous scenes in this play and yes the overall
trajectory is towards black comedy. The play ultimately reveals the tender and strong
connections between two lonely people, and provides something of a redemption for our
misanthrope before its touching, ambiguous finale. It has both heart and intellect behind
it, and there is much about what Panych has written that offers itself for serious
consideration.
Director Anna Mackmin has been directing this production for some time,
which is surprising given how little faith she exhibits in the text. In keeping with the
up-beat marketing, Mackmin directs at a breakneck pace, propelling every scene along with
lightning delivery from Risteard Cooper in the central role. Cooper keeps babbling at
such high speed that there is precious little space for the audience to shift their eyes
to Anna Manahan (Sive) on her
side of the stage. It might as well be a monologue for all the sense of connection
generated between the two actors, regardless of what Panych is trying to do with the
subtle interplay of mood and non-verbal communication in the script.
The play is punctuated by fade-downs between scenes. With some of the
scenes lasting only a few minutes, there are two potential effects that this device could
have. If there had been a stylistically consistent sense of empty space between bouts of
dialogue, this would have given the audience a place to explore the distances between the
characters. It would have given time to watch Manahan more carefully and study her
reactions, possibly adding up to an aesthetic in which silence is as eloquent as a stream
of world-weary bon mots. The other effect is the one which Macmkin has employed, which is
that the sudden darkness reinforces the verbal punchlines. They give the audience time to
laugh before the lights come up again and the assault is renewed. Though there are some
moments of quiet contemplation, they do not last long, and then all eyes are on Cooper as
he careens through the dialogue.
There are enough laughs in Auntie & Me to service the
summer crowds at which its marketing is most firmly aimed. Cooper is one of the Irish
stage’s most prominent light leads at the moment, and he does his usual job. Manahan
is given the rather thankless role of reacting in a vacuum though, and it takes some
effort to appreciate what she is trying to do. On the superficial level at which it is
presented, the production delivers. But there are glimpses of something much more powerful
beneath the shallow direction, and the original title suggests it. Vigil is so
much more evocative of the ambiguities suggested by this story of two people locked in a
long, lonely watch over one another. Unfortunately, Auntie & Me might as well
be ‘Me’ for all the space it provides for thematic development and involved
characterization.
