The National Theatre Society and the Dublin Theatre Festival have once more revealed a striking new dramatic talent with the potential to become another significant Irish writer for the stage. Alex Johnston, in his first very funny and ultimately serious play, has succeeded in creating not only enlivening, engaging and original dialogue, but a singular characterisation which actors around the world might give all else to play.
The character is Sean Spence, "a minor player in the story of his own life", who wanted to be a comedian, tried busking but couldn't get the hang of it, is liked by his friends but has difficulty in talking to them, spends his nights alone conjuring fantasy voices and images while masturbating, and ultimately literally shoots himself in the foot when playing with a gun in the Wicklow hills.
In this first production of the play, Charlie Bonner plays Sean as if to the character born, his eyes and body language belying the words he utters and the silences in which he cannot find even the unreal words.
And that is the great strength of the author's dialogue: few dramatists have managed as well as he to use inarticulate and apparently incommunicative conversations to convey precisely the emotional meanings and attitudes of his characters. The great majority of those conversations are duoloques. A small number are direct monologues with the audience. Fewer involve more than two people on stage. But the communicative power is enormous almost throughout.
Spence is surrounded by his friends (again, usually presented in couples). The self-assured but smugly sinister Stephen is back from Canada because of the "yes" vote in the divorce referendum having used his computer skills to help build a canal. Brian and Siobhan have a live-in relationship which breaks up when Siobhan finds herself attracted to the socially assured and concerned Kathy. The macho actor Ray is a magnet for the sexually hungry Martina but gets scared of her appetite. The other actor, Kirsten, finds herself working with Ray. And so the shifting and seemingly rootless social scene goes, with everyone talking about sex and almost never discussing relationships on a broader basis.
Since most of the sex is fairly explicit, this may not prove a comfortable night out for Aunt Mary. But it offers a superbly persuasive, highly comedic, deeply serious and very entertaining and informative snapshot of Irish youth at this time.
Excellently directed by Jimmy Fay in finely functional settings by Barbara Bradshaw well lit by Paul Keogan, it is sparkily, bravely and almost perfectly acted. If Charlie Bonners tops the bill, it is because he has by far the best part. All contribute most creatively to a substantial, serious and comic evening of richly rewarding theatre.
