DUDLEY ROAD
Union Theatre
★★
“we are left with a mix of uncertainty and anticlimax”
Paul Corcoran has a lot of kids. It’s hard to keep up – there are at least eight, possibly nine. We only meet four of them during the two hours of Cameron Corcoran’s new play, “Dudley Road”. Even Paul’s long-suffering wife is absent. She’s busy producing another child down in the maternity ward, while hubby’s at home swigging whisky. Barely leaving his armchair he desperately tries to cling onto the remaining members of his family: not so much birds leaving the nest, but rats leaving a sinking ship. Not everyone gets out alive.
The premise is enticing. Paul (James Finnegan) left County Sligo in Ireland for London a decade or so previously. We know this because he repeatedly admonishes his daughter Anne (Anna Georgina) for aspiring to return. ‘There is nothing there’ we are frequently told, as though we are unaware of the sharp increase of Irish emigration in the 1980s, which is the context for Corcoran’s play. Against this backdrop, the family saga plays out over the next decade and a half in chronological fits and starts. Although the style is classic kitchen sink realism, it is not always easy to believe in the characters portrayed. Finnegan’s alcoholic patriarch dips predictably into bullyish rage, yet we never really see the despair and vulnerability behind his behaviour that would have drawn us in. An intimidating presence, it is how his children react to him that forms the backbone of the narrative.
Anne is the defiant elder sister using marriage to escape, even though she has already been kicked out of home. Georgina’s portrayal has a good grip of her dichotomy; torn between the desire to reject her father and the innate need to protect him – the latter constantly losing the battle. Then there is Michael. The characters need to age by over a dozen years, but when we first meet Michael, he is still a schoolboy. Cameron Corcoran (the writer is also cast in his own play) struggles to illustrate the initial youthfulness, adopting mannerisms completely at odds with his physicality. He redeems himself in the second act as an adult, silently strong and credibly dealing with the scars that his father inflicted on him.
Director Simon Pilling does little to drive the action. The slow pace of the delivery is further hindered by the scene transitions. The arrival of Padraic (Daragh Cushen) from Sligo, who claims to be an illegitimate son of Paul’s, is a spanner in the works but the subplot has little impact. The intended cliffhanger as we reach interval leaves us confused, and temporarily unsure whether it’s time to go to the bar yet.
The second act, though, picks up the pace. The baby’s cries we heard at the beginning of the play have now become twelve-year-old Claire (Charlie Culley). She has become the sole carer for her father, who is bedridden of his own volition, and still self-medicating with whisky. Culley is a breath of fresh air, skilfully portraying an ingenue forced to deal with issues beyond her years and depicting an astute survey into the often impossibly contradictory dilemmas of dealing with the disease of alcoholism.
Another chronological shift, however, brings the show into extra-time with an overlong scene tacked onto what we had assumed was quite a poignant finale. Loose ends are not quite tied up and, despite tragedies being revealed, we are left with a mix of uncertainty and anticlimax. Corcoran’s play touches on quite a few issues without really deciding which to focus on. There is a fine piece of writing in there, waiting for that decision.
DUDLEY ROAD
Union Theatre
Reviewed on 14th January 2025
by Jonathan Evans
Previously reviewed at this venue:
NOOK | ★★½ | August 2024
WET FEET | ★★★★ | June 2024
THE ESSENCE OF AUDREY | ★★★★ | February 2024
GHOST ON A WIRE | ★★★ | September 2022
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