A WHISTLE IN THE DARK. To 13 November.
Glasgow
A WHISTLE IN THE DARK
by Tom Murphy
Citizens' Theatre To 13 November 2004
Tue-Sat 7.30pm
Audio-described 11 Nov
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 0141 429 0022
www.citz.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 October
Playboys go sour in the world of the West Midlands.Tom Murphy's 1960 play about Irishmen in England is an uncompromising picture of violent male culture. Its urban picture of an Irish family come to settle a grudge with their fists curdles the rural poetry of Synge's Playboy of the Western World into a compulsive critique of romantic myths surrounding family honour.
Murphy is a fine enough writer to make reviving this early play (less complex than his later work) worthwhile. There's skilful pacing of plot and vivid character-drawing. And in Roxana Silbert's production, mayhem from the start as Michael Carney's brothers descend on the home he's set up in Coventry with his wife Betty.
As the visitors tear around before a coherent word is spoken the furnishings suffer the kind of damage Betty and Michael the one who got away (or, by his family's standards, the coward who sneaked off) will undergo as the fight approaches and young brother Des is drawn into the vicious circle of his brother's ways.
Romantic myths of violence and glory are smashed as the action proceeds, including the empty rhetoric of Dada, looked up to with unthinking fervour but revealed as an empty windbag (given a hollow, bearded bluster by Ciaran McIntyre). It's a fine company all round, including Michael Glenn Murphy's hanger-on who finds he'd better get going when the tough turn on him and Lydia Baksh as the English wife despised for both her sex and nationality by the macho men of Erin, and caught eventually in her husband's fury.
Packy Lee shows how ready Des is to slough off the innocent-seeming surface Michael had hoped to keep from the family's violent legacy. Once his teeth are bared they're razors for the vicious mindset already bred within him. Damian Kearney looms as mindless muscles Iggy, with the patience of the stupid and firm tracks when he does make a move. Most menacing is Harry, in whom toughness and determination mix with the power to think and, therefore, to hate. Cal MacAninch gives a chillingly compelling portrayal in a blizzard of a production with a wind-chill factor to freeze the Clyde.
Michael Carney: Dermot Kerrigan
Harry Carney: Cal MacAninch
Des Carney: Packy Lee
Iggy Carney: Damian Kearney
Hugo Carney: Jason Kavanagh
Dada: Ciaran McIntyre
Betty: Lydia Baksh
Mush: Michael Glenn Murphy
Director: Roxana Silbert
Designer: Liz Cooke
Lighting: Philip Gladwell
Violence: Denis Agnew
2004-11-09 06:35:20