EDEN.
London
EDEN
by Eugene O'Brien
Arts Theatre
Mon-Sat .745pm Mat Thu & Sat 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS 020 7836 3334/0870 840 1111 (24 hours/7days)
Review Timothy Ramsden 31 October 2002
Fine performances fill in the lives of characters revealed through recounted struggles.It's a marriage made in theatre managers' heaven. Conor McPherson, Ireland's high king of monologue-based drama, directing O'Brien's story told through intercut-monologues. Though it takes a time for the stories to converge, they come to play ironically off one another, repeatedly switching audience perspectives. It's hard not to find sympathies shifting too when, for the time being, you're faced full on by a character giving their version, solo, of events. This goes some way to compensate for loss of dramatic tension and present-tense events inherent in this dramatic form.
O'Brien writes about a marriage not made in heaven, or if so, on a peculiarly bad day for celestial construction. Billy and Breda have fallen apart. He's seeking to combine evenings round the pubs with making a play for the local beauty. Some chance, given the drink-slurred speech which is the first thing to hit us in Don Wycherley's performance.
There's nothing less far-fetched about Breda's more touching dream of re-gaining Billy's affections. She's put herself through a severe diet to do it aware of 'the word' insultingly spoken about her in her former size. Like anyone in a one-sided love relationship, she detects huge, illusory prospects from the smallest sign.
With his straight-backed, four-square stance, hands assertively pocketed at the start, Wycherley's Billy proceeds to show a character with no sense of self-criticism. He's complacently sure of himself, never examining critically his own role in the forlorn sexual pursuit. It's this that leads to his final grotesque attempt, amazed to find himself repulsed only because he was fool enough to think he was being invited.
Billy's sole reference point outside himself is his mate Tony, known to the lads locally as James Galway, connecting through the Irish musician's publicity sobriquet as 'The Man with the Golden Flute'. It is, inevitably in Billy's world, a phallic reference and as Breda tells us, one that overplays the local man's achievement.
Catherine Walsh's ever-hopeful character won't accept defeat either. More self-aware, she's therefore more dignified. But both actors evoke a sense of dignity through their characters' struggle for happiness, their hope amid defeat.
Billy: Don Wycherley
Breda: Catherine Walsh
Director: Conor McPherson
Designer: Blaithin Sheerin
Lighting: Paul Keogan
Sound: Cormac Carroll
Vocal coach: Andrea Ainsworth
2002-11-01 10:01:48