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DUDLEY ROAD

★★

Union Theatre

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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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NOOK

★★½

Union Theatre

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NOOK at the Union Theatre

★★½

“Nook is best in its moments of tenderness”

A tense family drama revolving around a shared history of trauma, Off Main Stage’s new production Nook shines a light on the lasting effects of wounds from childhood: how they shape entire lives and cause permanent fissures between siblings.

Writer Cameron Corcoran, who also plays Tom, the younger of two brothers, creates a simple but effective narrative device: following their mother’s funeral, two brothers and a sister return to the home where they grew up, in order to read the will. The brothers are accompanied by their wives, and their uncle Phillip (Tim Molyneux) an alcoholic in recovery who lived with their mother and credits her with turning his life around. He is also the only one to hold any tenderness for the mother, and he tries to convince the siblings that she was more than the monster they remember her as. The tensions simmering just below the surface erupt when the will is read and everything is left to the eldest brother Kenny, played by Shannon Smith.

The play addresses the insidious consequences of physical and sexual abuse, with the mother’s ‘hands on’ parenting and an obscure past incident between sister Beth (Velvet Brown) and Phillip never far from the minds of the characters. The tensions emerging from class dynamics within relationships are also central: both brothers have married aspirational middle-class women – as evidenced by their choice of children’s names: Hugo and Arabella – who are appalled by their husbands’ behaviour upon returning to the house, where they revert to their old, combative selves.

Overall, the performances are good, Brown is compelling as the emotionally damaged sister trying to keep the family together. Kenny’s wife Sarah, played well by Zoë Scott, is all barely contained rage and contempt, while Tom’s partner Maya (Aoife Boyle) is by turns supportive and exasperated. The stage set is simple and evocative, a basic living room set up of sofa, armchair and coffee table is a fitting backdrop for the confrontations, uneasy alliances, and emotional outbursts that drive the play. Hector Smith’s direction enables the actors to make the best of this space, and the physical performances are striking; Corcoran’s adoption of childlike mannerisms in the presence of his overbearing older brother is particularly commendable.

Nevertheless, the narrative lacunae and the things left unsaid, while perhaps an accurate depiction of the difficulties sharing traumatic experiences, leave the audience too uncertain about events – there is little for us to grasp onto in terms of plot, leading to a sense of waiting for a revelation that never truly emerges. Nook is best in its moments of tenderness, as Sarah and Maya try to comfort and guide their husbands, but these are too fleeting. The play opens with Sarah’s bitterness and irritability, and this sets the tone for the action to come, creating a piece that is possibly too tonally consistent, and lacking in the elements of comedy that make the malevolent family-oriented work of playwrights like Harold Pinter so compelling.


NOOK at the Union Theatre

Reviewed on 19th August 2024

by Rob Tomlinson

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

WET FEET | ★★★★ | June 2024
THE ESSENCE OF AUDREY | ★★★★ | February 2024
GHOST ON A WIRE | ★★★ | September 2022

NOOK

NOOK

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