A WHISTLE IN THE DARK. To 6 May.

London

A WHISTLE IN THE DARK
by Tom Murphy

Tricycle Theatre To 6 May 2006
Mon-Sat 8pm (3 April 7pm) Mat Sat 4pm & 26 April 2pm no performance 17 April, 5 May
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7328 1000
www.tricycle.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 March at Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester

Family horror-show analyses tradition of violence.
A health warning: this co-production between Manchester and Kilburn will have some changes as it moves from the Royal Exchange’s in-the-round stage to the endstage Tricycle.

Another health warning: the family that follows Michael from Ireland to his new Coventry home and West Midlands wife in Tom Murphy’s 1961 full-length dramatic debut is a violent, disruptive set, crashing round Michael and Betty’s house from the opening moment. As a calling-card script Whistle bears a signature very different from later Murphy plays with their extensive complexes of thought and reflection.

Dublin’s Abbey Theatre rejected the script, which was premiered at London’s Theatre Royal E15 (The Murphy Gloatometer must have been at fever-level when Ireland’s ‘national theatre’, presented a 6-play ‘Murphy at the Abbey’ season 5 years ago). The reason for the original rejection was that Murphy was demeaning the noble Irish character (putting him line with similar allegations directed at Synge and O’Casey before him)

Yet there’s an ironic fitness to that initial rejection. The Abbey was as wilfully blind in its romantic view of Ireland as Murphy’s characters are in their self-image. Drunken bullies, the stronger drawing the weaker in their gravitational pull, bringing initially innocent-mannered young Des into their world. And family outsider Mush. A highly-vocal, ever-moving Fergal McElherron shows Mush forever trying to prove himself one of the boys by being louder and keener at every step, agreeing with everything the hardmen say.

Patrick O’Kane’s blue-collar Michael shows as much energy for order as his brothers for aggravation., trying to calm his horrified wife, whom the family virtually dispossess of her home; theirs is no world for women to raise a protest. Among the fine cast Damian O’Hare looks and can sound the most respectable but is the most violent, his intelligence turned rancid by the macho myth. And Gary Whelan gives this lot’s loudmouthed Dada an explosive nihilism from a place of traditional authority so entrenched he can excuse his avoidance of the fight he urges his sons into. Jacob Murray’s doesn’t efface Roxana Silbert’s 1994 Glasgow revival, but speaks Murphy’s drama with its own clear voice.

Harry: Damian O’Hare
Hugo: Frank Laverty
Betty: Esther Hall
Iggy: Sean Kearns
Mush: Fergal McElherron
Michael: Patrick O’Kane
Dada: Gary Whelan
Des: Kieran Gough

Director: Jacob Murray
Designer: Laurie Dennett
Lighting: Jon Driscoll
Sound: Carolyn Downing
Music: Tayo Akinbode
Dialects: Neil Swain
Fights: Renny Krupinski

2006-04-03 10:02:06