Rory Thomas reviews Irish theatre festival production
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We all should see much more theatre. There are a great many opportunities to do that in London: from the West End, to the RSC, indeed to local theatre groups. We are in the capital rather spoilt for theatre, in fact. First to have such abundance at our convenience, and in the second, belong to a society and culture where said abundance can flourish without censorship or stultification.
I recently saw a production of Just Above Dogs directed by Anne Curtis of Green Curtain Theatre, as part of a first festival of London Irish Plays at the West London Trade Union Club, in Acton.
Anne told me : '' The reason for writing the play was to show an example of both sides of the experience of emigration; as an Irish person who came to England as a child I was aware of the prejudice against members of my own community. I heard all the remarks about stupid Paddy, drunken Paddy etc. and I knew full well that this didn’t represent the whole picture and I wanted to write a play which showed that.''
The play depicts the emotional upheaval of immigrant life - specifically that of rural Irish men seeking employment in Britain during the 1970’s - casting a lens over the oftentimes squalid conditions, poor living standards, scarcity of work (and therefore money), and the exploitative and parasitic conduct of unscrupulous subcontractors, or “subbies”, who would commission them at subpar wages.
It was well-written and equally well acted, raw and unapologetic. And through the personal account of three central characters, albeit fictional, we were nevertheless given to the very real and undeniable achievements of those anonymous men who were the many hands that built the motorways, and bridges, and tunnels and hydroelectric systems Britain prospered from.
The play is a tragic ode to those men and their families, and whose courage and strength still moves hearts and industry to this day.
The cast is three characters, bar some doubling for minor peripheral roles. One a journalist and documentary maker set in the present day, researching the ambiguous disappearance of his uncle on a construction site, some twenty years prior. The other two are brothers (one being the missing Uncle) seeking work in 1970's Camden, having fled from Ireland. The play alternates between past and present, assembling the patchy fabric of history, threadbare with time, and that compel the journalist to his mission. In his findings, deftly animated by all three actors, we are given to a version of events from the time of the brothers arriving in London, their bleak attempts to find work, a hand-to-mouth existence at once lean and desperate, a division fuelled by drink, and finally a bloodied disappearance shrouded by secrecy, enduring guilt, and allusions to murder.
At the surface, these exploited men appear mere drunkards, chancers, pests. Yet their jaded exterior belies a much more irreconcilable truth: they worked without guarantee of right payment in a country that did not want them and through conditions unfit for animals under the whim of fat and keen capitalists.
In the remaining minutes, the story quickens to a thrumming tempo, each moment a calamitous consequence of the last until finally brought up sharply by a devastating confession – a challenge to which the actors are more than capable of sustaining, and each in turn own entirely.
I hugely enjoyed this play and I encourage research into future productions by this company. All three actors, Kieran Moriarty, Niall Bishop and Kevin Bohan, deliver up at once complete rounded characters distinct and with flawless Irish cadences. The three men rend from the text with each word its power and history bristling before a ready audience without a beat.
As to the set, a hungry picture with minimal adornment, that further imbued their performance with a palpable austerity, much appropriate for this material. The audience filed into the auditorium to Irish Folk Music and the lights fell – the rest is history.
Rory Thomas
Traitors, Cads & Cowards, 8pm, Friday, 11 November & Saturday, 12 November.
From playwright Martin McNamara, comes to the West London Trades Union Club in Acton for the Armistice weekend (Friday, 11th & Saturday, 12th November).
1916. Military wing of Wandsworth Prison. Liam, an Irish volunteer from the Easter Rising in Dublin, has been brought over to London for questioning.
He's bunked in with Alfred, a shell-shocked veteran of the trenches up on desertion charges. His other cell mate is Henry, a conscientious objector court martialed for refusing his call up papers.
Can three very different 'Traitors to the King' find common ground?
Martin McNamara says: "Hopefully Traitors has something to say about the savagery of conflict and its effects on the often forgotten foot soldiers. It's also about how the people labelled cowards and traitors can be the bravest and noblest because they will only fight for what they truly believe."
West London Trade Union Club, 33-35 High Street, Acton W3 6ND
Tickets: £10 (£8 concs). Ticket information
For information on the festival: www.irishinlondontheatre.co.uk
9 November 2016
