AMBITION, LOVE AND CHOICES IN AN OLDER IRELAND
Jonathan Bank’s Mint Theater company lately gave us an arresting revival of Miles Malleson’s Yours Unfaithfully in this theatre, and here he is reinvigorating another 1930s play, this time by the near-forgotten Irish playwright Teresa Deevy, From the title I vaguely expected a familiar story of wifely submission or rebellion, with the local crone andMother Church giving trouble on the sidelines. Actually Deevy’s story is more interesting than that, sparkingly youthful, and until the final moment (no spoilers) Fiach Kunz’s dashing James Whelan has as yet married nobody.
He’s made a grand life for himself, though: we meet him first by report, in a short first-act scene where amiable Tom (Patrick McBrearty) and Bill McGafferty (Darragh Feehely) are joshing with pretty Nan Bowers (Cliona Flynn). We get a sense of the town and its rumours: Bill is off to a new job, the others impressed that Whelan got the Dublin job several of them had been in for. When our hero himself appears it is to swagger a bit, cocky and confident, pretty sure that though he hasn’t been accepted yet, Nan will wait for him. But she has an eye for another lad, Jack. In the background is the sensible, less glamorous Kate (Eavan Gaffney). She’s everyone’s friend, and Whelan as he leaves has brought a bag of marbles for her little brother Willy – known as Apollo.
It’s cosy, the group”s natures well laid out in preparaation for the longer, sharper life after the interval. Now, seven years on, we’re in the office of Whelan’s “Silver WIngs Motor Services”, with Tom as one of his drivers, a proudly grown-up Will in the front office and a more assured Kate dropping in and out, disapproving of a new wild card in the form of posher uppity Nora, who clearly wants to be wife-to-james-whelan. He , though, is oddly awkward with her advances (“showing yourself in that cheap way”) and observes “”I never speak long with Nora than I feel myself disappointed”. The language is lovely.
David Rawle’s Will too is a bit of a treat here: a touch camp, a touch absurd. Decent workaday Tom, his sharp understanding drawn in a few moments , is another. And of course into the office comes Nan: in a black shawl, widowed with a child, wanting a job. Small touches, and fine acting, enable all the principals to have visibly aged in the seven years: Nan tired and beaten, Whelan tougher and harder, Tom more perceptive. But old slights and old loves live on: as Whelan says , Nan has “the same soft look she always had.”.
The emotional undercurrents and doubts are beautifully, gently achieved by them all: when Whelan snaps “nothing torments me. I’m perfectly happy” or Willy suddenly rises to disrespect his boss over his behaviour, your belief is complete. It had for a while has seemed sentimentally clear what will – and should – happen between these still-young people, but then Deevy gives us one extraordinary dramatic moment that capsizes everything. So when another six months have passed before the final scene, the resolution leaves you , as you always should be in a play or novel, reflecting with some worry on their afterlives. Bravo!
Jermynstreettheatre co.uk to 25 July
rating four
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