EPIC. To 10 November.
EPIC
by Declan Gorman
Upstate Live Theatre Company at Traverse 1
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 10 November
Everyday lives set within mythic dimensions eventually take hold on the imagination.Well, it is and it isn't – epic, that is. Four actors working round a single-piece set, scene-shifting and doubling like nobody's business isn't Cecil B. De Mille, nor much by way of being Homeric either. Yet, as this hard-working Drogheda company create their span of characters the drama takes hold and evokes a world at once specific and resonant; both modern and in tune with a myth-misted past.
The production's on dodgiest ground when directly evoking the millennium-old tale behind the kaleidoscope of modern stories. The actors' beast movement is hardly sophisticated and the references flash past the uninitiated. But they leave a sense behind to magnify the realistic plot-threads. For all their rapidity, these are much more focused and sharp-edged than soap-opera. Only the journalist Maeve is regarded from outside; the others' dilemmas are real and well-imagined.
They are the crises life throws at people. An unwanted pregnancy in a no-abortion society, the farmer forced at gunpoint to take the smuggled beasts he's ordered, despite the foot-and-mouth outbreak that puts him at risk. The e-hacking blackmailer who's caught out by his own cleverness. These build an action with its own local habitation – very local; you need special sheep for these hills, inured against the winds from Sellafield – yet one tied in to perennial situations. Even the doubling makes the occasional point as Sinead Douglas emerges in rapid succession either end of the upstage curtain, playing the local Lothario's bits on two sides.
Most interesting is fine actor Brendan McCormick's Danny: a tough, violent teenager capable of seeing off a Provo punishment squad, yet vulnerable to bouts of physical pain and love for just-gone 16 Fiona. It's her first time in bed to have sex; his first for having sex in a proper bed.
Such characters, at the mercy of their own personalities, others' exploitation and larger forces – the animal virus is a modern-rooted form of the mythic sterility curse (the play's subtitle being 'The Curse of Macha') – both evoke their various landscapes and create an interlinked drama of perpetual human suffering. Yet, like a fine traditional tale, the sorrow gives rise to pity, even hope, rather than misery and despair.
Kaz/Ferdia/Ray Higgins/Junior Tynan/Ardan: John Ruddy
Danny Neeson/McRoth/Connall Carney/Matt Reidy/Bristle: Brendan McCormick
Shady/Fedelma/Maeve O'Finn/Fiona O'Finn/Biddy Gilmartin/Erner/Mrs Timoney/Mary Scully/Macha: Sinead Douglas
Fergus Rock/Allen O'Muireisc/Louis McCooey/John Dooley/Michael Tynan/Noisiu/Grunt/Morrigan: Kieran Hurley
Director: Declan Gorman
Designer/Costume: Paul O'Mahoney
Lighting: Declan Mallon
Sound: John Ruddy
Choreography: Carina McGrail
2002-11-13 01:18:14