THE FIELD. To 1 July.
London
THE FIELD
by John B Keane
Tricycle Theatre To 2006
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 4pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7328 1000
www.tricycle.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 June
Gripping play revived with some fine central performances.
John Keane (1928-2002) could, like August Wilson, the Black American dramatist frequently produced at the Tricycle, tell an involving story without much apparent action. As events pass and people talk, a larger picture of a society builds.
There’s only one overtly violent scene here, though the story’s permeated by threat. Keane, though, allows no easy assumptions. When a widow wants to auction her sole valuable possession, a 4-acre field, local farmer Bull McCabe’s determined to get it at a knock-down price. Yet his tactics are underpinned by reasoning it’s hard to dispute. The widow is going for the highest price; she needs the money. But McCabe needs the land as a link between his own land and the water. And his animals have been manuring the field over the years he’s rented it.
He claims his price has stretched his financial limits; well, he would say that. But the only other buyer who slips through McCabe’s monopoly is an outsider who wants to fill the space with profitable concrete blocks.
This 1966 play shows pre-Troubles Ireland could match Sicily for omerta and a bully’s power to terrorise a neighbourhood. Especially when he’s related to almost everyone, and can threaten auctioneer-publican Mick Flanagan (whose pub is the main setting) with a boycott. Though Mick looks after himself, going along with McCabe once he’s assured he’ll get his full percentage. The play ends by suggesting such forces pass down the generations.
Certainly the formal powers can do nothing. They, police and church, are the least convincing aspect of Roisin McBrinn’s production. Hardly 3-dimensional characters they could still do with some shading beyond the declamations and threats seen here. A few other characters fail to leap full into life also, or never quite come into focus.
But David Ganly’s Mick is a fine picture of plausible moral equivocation, Tony Rohr is strong as a downmarket barfly who’s anyone’s for a whiskey but knows where his bread’s buttered. And Lorcan Cranitch’s Bull, fearsome and threatening but able to articulate vividly a common man’s satirical sense of justice, gives the play its superb centre.
Bull McCabe: Lorcan Cranitch
Leamy Flanagan: Ross Finbow
Mick Flanagan: David Ganly
Maimie Flanagan: Rita Hamill
Dandy McCabe: John O’Toole
Tadhg McCabe: Eamonn Owens
Bird O’Donnell: Tony Rohr
Mrs McCabe/Maggie Butler: Heather Tobias
Sergeant Leahy: Tom Vaughan-Lawlor
William Dee: Jean-Paul Van Cauwelaert
Father Murphy/Bishop: John Watts
Director: Roisin McBrinn
Designer: Paul Wills
Lighting: Hartley T A Kemp
Sound/Composer: Adam Cork
Fight director: Paul Benzing
2006-06-08 01:09:45