“This is ultimately an excellent play still in the works. With a lot of fine-tuning and a few cuts, it could be devastating and magnificent.”
All the elements are present for potential brilliance in this brutal story about the inner workings of the IRA, but due to a combination of some strange production choices and a slightly baggy script, it doesn’t quite come together.
Looking back at the chaos and turmoil during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Under the Black Rock highlights the messy blend of contradicting motives, lack of trust and inevitable in-fighting that took hold. Following the story of the Ryan family, we see how each member is torn apart, and their fates remoulded by actions of the IRA.
The performances are generally strong, and thankfully no-one’s struggling with the accent, which would have been wildly distracting. We begin and end with a rendition of The Dubliners’ Grace sung by Jordan Walker, which might have come across as beautifully mournful if Walker’s voice wasn’t so musical-theatre-ready. Instead, it feels a little saccharine in an otherwise grim and violent tale.
It’s a pleasure to see such a full cast at the Arcola, where one or two-person plays generally hold court. But for some reason, despite having eight people on stage, director Ben Kavangh has chosen to cast two main female roles with one actress, Flora Montgomery. Playing both the calm, head-strong IRA leader Bridget Caskey, and mother of the Ryan family, Sandra Ryan, she’s forced to play the roles to extremes, slipping between characters by merely removing her burgundy trench coat to reveal an oversized pastel cardigan. Where Bridget is understated and powerful, Sandra must inevitably be week and pathetic. At some point Sandra is referred to as “cool under fire”, but we don’t get to see any of that, because it would too closely resemble Bridget. Instead, her performance of Sandra is inevitably overwrought and wet.
Perhaps because this is loosely based on a true story, there’s a bit too much crammed in, and some of the main plot points are only glanced at. The death of Alan Ryan (Walker), for example, is only discovered in a later conversation, and I don’t think we ever hear how he actually died, which feels important given how it goes on to shape the rest of the story. Similarly, the fate of Fin McElwaine, also played by Walker, is only mentioned later, and the details never really explored.
Ceci Calf’s design sees a massive volcanic rock looming over the stage throughout. It’s effectively oppressive, if a little on the nose. The thrust staging isn’t quite used to full advantage, with a lot of the action taking place very close to the front, and long speeches given with backs turned to half the audience. It’s fine to bring the action so close if there’s enough movement, but so much of the script requires performers to stand their ground, quite literally.
This is ultimately an excellent play still in the works. With a lot of fine-tuning and a few cuts, it could be devastating and magnificent.
“Whatever the idea was in its fruition, it’s been lost in the execution”
I am not averse to a little chaos. And I’m often happy to see the conventional, linear form flipped on its head for the sake of communicating a particularly tricky message to the audience. But in the instance of Fruits, Or the Decline of a Distant Memory, I’m not at all sure what the message was supposed to be.
Themes of love, sex and identity run hazily through a series of non sequitur vignettes, surreal and nonsensical: two little girls play various games until one of them is seemingly lost forever in hide-and-seek; someone stands and lists all the possible genders, sexualities, and sexual preferences to the point of absurdity; a woman dressed as Eve, leaves covering her crotch and nipples with a snake wrapped round her neck, proceeds to devour an apple, spit it out, and beat the snake to death. Throughout, fruit is eaten, spat out, and violently smashed to the ground, after which a glittering fruit fly comes to enjoy the spoils whilst telling us about his first sexual encounter.
There’s definitely a lot of humour, which is a relief because something like this could easily take itself far too seriously: a cleaner, whilst ‘cleaning’ the audience, appears to find a baggy of unidentified white powder on a fellow reviewer, and greedily snorts it all up; a boy lays solemnly crying in a woman’s lap, and she peers at the audience, shrugging, “well, fuck this shit.” It’s irreverent and self-aware, but in the context of the rest of the script, it all just seems meaningless.
The design, too, is bizarre: Playing to the length of the long, skinny room, with benches on either side, the audience’s attention is drawn from one end to the other. The lighting is sophisticated, following certain performers with multiple spotlights, or shedding pink and yellow washes across the whole. One scene has a woman desperately chasing an ever-moving spotlight, which is actually very funny. But sometimes a monologue is carried out in darkness, whilst the audience remains well-lit, or a spotlight appears halfway through a scene. It feels both purposeful and poorly chosen. If you’re going to require the audience to seek out the next voice on such a long stage, you have to show them where to look. On top of that, in an attempt to create a dream-like atmosphere, there’s so much reverb on the mics that quite a lot of the script is lost to the already cavernous room.
Whatever the idea was in its fruition, it’s been lost in the execution. TAKDAJA prove themselves to be very capable, diverse performers, but the script needs a lot more guidance.
