On Such As We - Billy Roche

Dublin: Peacock Theatre
November 29 - January 26

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    Billy Roche rose to fame in the late 1980s with his acclaimed Wexford Trilogy. This trio of plays (A Handful of Stars, Poor Beast in the Rain, and Belfry) offered a vision of provincialism and colloquialism that elevated the parochial to a linguistic and thematic level which made a mark on the Irish stage. Roche subsequently wrote only two more plays. The last of these, The Cavalcaders, appeared in 1993. On Such As We is intended to be the playwright’s triumphant return home. Like its predecessors, it is an intimate, quite detailed character piece which locates those characters within a particular, well defined environment.
    It is set in Wexford, specifically in a barber’s shop with overhead apartments. In residence are Oweney, the barber himself (portrayed by Brendan Gleeson), Matt (Jason Gilroy), an angry young would-be artist, and, just as the play opens, Leonard (Laurence Kinlan) a young man who has just been laid off as the local hotel has closed. Among those who frequent the establishment on a habitual basis are elderly Richie (Frank McDonald), whose wife is slowly dying in a local hospital, his nephew Eddie (David Herlihy), legbreaker for a local ‘businessman’ who also happens to have been a classmate of Oweney’s at school.
    Into this seemingly exclusively male preserve come two females who alter the status quo. One is feisty orphan girl Sally (Pauline Hutton). She takes a shine to young Leonard and confronts Matt with his shallow, self-absorbed notions of artistic angst. The other is Maeve (Antoine Byrne), the attractive wife of that local ‘businessman’. She has just set up her own boutique and is trying to define her identity on her own terms. The problem is that part of her personal growth involves a tentative romance with Oweney, which is risky for them both.
    This is an intricate piece of writing. The play has relatively little plot, throwing a great deal of weight upon characterization for narrative and thematic momentum. It explores the threads of desire which drive individuals trapped by circumstance or situation to seek escape. Each of these people has some kind of private cell which inhibits their ambition. Each has different needs and desires, some emotional, some more practical. All have been defined relative to the environment in which they live.
    The community itself is one fraught by paradox. It is traditional and small-town, yet it is part of a growing modern urban environment. The lurking presence of the ‘businessman’ is felt in the many references to his ownership of most of the local property. He is emptying the street of small, old-fashioned operators (like Oweney) and leaving it to rot before opening the space for fast-food and mini malls. On one level tradition is lionized here, but on another there is a strong sense that tradition is not all it’s cracked up to be. Habit can be as destructive as progress: this drama takes place at the fault lines between them. The identities of the characters emerge as they navigate between the colloquial and the aspirational, and the result is not always clearly positive or negative.
    Roche has been somewhat superseded of late by the work of Martin McDonagh (The Leenane Trilogy). McDonagh has taken similar themes to new extremes of absurdist self-parody, seen most obviously in The Lonesome West. While on one hand this makes Roche’s work a refreshingly adult variant on a theme, it also makes it less immediately exciting. One can always admire good writing (although the script is not without its contrivances and weaker characters), but perhaps there ought to be a more urgent reason to see it.
    This production has been directed with energy and conviction by director Wilson Milam. He makes use of four entrances to keep the action moving. Scenes set at different times segue neatly into one another as different parts of the stage are lit, visually reinforcing the sense of compartmentalization which defines these characters and their world as well as keeping up narrative momentum. There is also a good cast. Gleeson is wonderful in his first stage appearance in ten years. He brings a convincing naturalism to his characterization. His physical deportment, his vocal inflections, and his mannerisms are so casual that the character seems to be a fusion of the character and the actor. Oweney is a believable person and seems understandably the center of his particular universe. The other characters are drawn to him in different ways, but with Gleeson’s help, it is easy to see why.
    That said, the central romance is never really credible. It is thematically and intellectually inevitable, but it lacks grounding. Part of the problem may be the writing, but Byrne’s characterization also gives such a strong sense of her separateness from all around her as to make her attraction to Oweney feel forced and artificial. McDonald gives a pleasingly understated performance as the older man, and although ‘understatement’ is something of a watchword for the production on the whole, Herlihy (A Whistle in the Dark) is effective as the legbreaker, shifting from menace to cheerful ‘laddism’ in a way which raises questions about machoism and masculinity. Similarly Hutton must be becoming increasingly frustrated at having to play chirpy juveniles (Midden, The Memory of Water), but she allows for sufficient variance in tone to keep things lively.