Why have the Troubles inspired relatively little lasting drama? One answer lies in the nature of the dominant form of theatre in Northern Ireland. Most of what has worked, from Graham Reid to Gary Mitchell, has been meticulously naturalistic. For all its revealing power, though, close-up slice-of-life realism is not very good at the big picture. The intimate life of the tribe is laid bare, but the wider dynamic of conflict remains obscure.
This is why, for all its failings, the new Tinderbox show, No Place Like Home, is so interesting. Though directly and explicitly inspired by one of the central experiences of the Troubles, its approach is angular, fragmentary and non-realistic. With admirable ambition, it tries to encapsulate a reality that goes beyond any one community or any particular period. Its theme is the forced eviction of those who are deemed not to belong.
Part of the problem, indeed, is that the piece is too ambitious, aiming as it does to enact the sense of displacement, not just over 33 years of the Troubles, but in all of modern history. Trying to do this with five young actors on a largely bare set requires a thrilling boldness. But it also misses a central point. To create a sense of dislocation, you first need a sharp sense of location. No Place Like Home creates it quite brilliantly but then dissipates it in its search for universal resonance.
The basic problem is that Tinderbox, under artistic director Simon Magill, has put together two elements that might be best kept apart. Going for a big, global theme is fine. So is the concept of a devised show, to which everyone - actors, director, writer, composer, designer - contributes equally. Doing both together, however, tends to exaggerate the dangers inherent in each. Brilliant ideas fight for space with half-baked notions. A sharp vision is blunted by a fog of worthiness.
The great strengths of the piece all come from a firm grasp of specifics. Owen McCafferty's text is superbly effective when it gives a wry Belfast inflection to broad metaphors. The notion of Archimedes (who first grasped the principle of displacement) as a Belfast plumber hounded because he says things that unsettle cherished views of reality, is inspired. The reduction of victims to banal clichΘs ("an elderly couple who never did anyone any harm unquote") rings more bells than a royal wedding.
Working off these well-honed images, the performers achieve a strikingly confident presence. Playing against Marcus Costello's starkly expressive sets and the evocative interplay of familiarity and discord in Conor Mitchell's score, they are, at these moments, perfectly poised between the particular and the general.
That poise is badly shaken, however, when the show becomes a compendium of global horrors: Rwanda, Bosnia, the Holocaust. Theatrical snapshots of such apocalyptic events are bound to be less profound even than a TV soundbite. The attempt to fill the resulting hollowness with all-too-familiar stylised movements merely draws attention to the absence of any deeply engaged content.
These problems don't, however, obscure the fact that Tinderbox is on to something here. The ground that has been laid out has its swamps and stones, but if the company can continue to clear it, it just might yield enduring images of the Troubles.
