Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour
Town Hall Theatre, Galway
★★★
If you looked at the ensemble behind this impeccably considered display of bad behaviour and were forced to choose a star, the names you should choose are Amy Ball and Laura Donnelly. They are the casting directors. In bringing Lee Hall's adaptation of Alan Warner's scabrously comic novel The Sopranos to the stage for the National Theatre of Scotland and Theatre Live, they have found six young performers who eschew the pall of stage school but carry the precision of the mercilessly drilled girl choir they play, while exuding the rapport that makes comedy and music seem so effortless.
Standing in a line of plaid kilts, cardigans and individually customised Doc Martins, they could be from any school where rebellion jabs at conformity. But Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour seems to proudly boast higher pregnancy rates than a fertility clinic. Like the scale of their heroic drinking, you'll have to take their word for it.
Director Vicky Featherstone recognises a tale unmoderated by authority figures so wisely leaves their stage without supervision. Just as the girls abscond early during a trip to Edinburgh for a choir competition, changing into clubwear that Miley Cyrus might tut at, the show lets them play by their own rules. They conjure up every other character, usually portrayed as a gleeful, creaking, sex-obsessed parody. Perhaps you’ve met their stony invigilator, Sister Condom?
If this allows for some epic myth-building, their journey is something similar; a ragtag odyssey through adolescence, bars and assorted underworlds. Goody-two-shoes Kay (Karen Fishwick), destined for college but laden with secrets, is more compatible with Dawn Sievewright’s vituperative and vulnerable Fionnuala than she realises. Caroline Deyga’s Chell, Kirsty MacLaren’s Manda and FrancesMayli McCann’s Kylah offer strong, clearly delineated support. And the superb Melissa Allan as Orla, who has recently overcome cancer and refers to herself as “the pubeless wonder”, will share a story about her attempted shedding of virginity that is both hilarious and horrifying.
The play itself straddles the same line without comment or censure – the girls have yet to factor in how being catatonically drunk or high affects judgement and sexual consent – but some may feel just as concerned at the length of this journey. It is so episodic and reassuringly repetitive over nearly two hours – another bar, another blow-up – that it might have been better rationed out as a TV series.
The stage, however, makes every use of their harmonies, here threaded through the hymns of Handel, Bach and Mendelssohn and the collected works of ELO’s Jeff Lynne. Performed with a rock trio, this intersperses the voices of angels with the exploits of devils. In a play this acrid, you’ll always turn your nose at the first whiff of sentiment. But there is something more reassuring, at the end of this engagingly performed school days adventure, that very little has been learned.
