The New Theatre, Dublin
Each of us must live the life God gives him, it cannot be shirked. That is the advice given to the bitter Philoctetes, in Sophocles’ version of his legend, who, tormented with a festering foot injury, had been abandoned on an island by fellow soldiers, en route to Troy. He takes the counsel as well as might be expected. It could be worse, though; he could be Prometheus, chained for eternity to a rock while vultures pick his liver out daily. Or, worse still, he could be Philly Halton, the cantankerous central figure in Shane Connaughton’s recent play, whose long, long list of grievances include – but are by no means limited to – various mythic afflictions.
Hobbling on a bleeding foot around his small, unpromising plot of Co Cavan, a one-time Gaelic football pitch where he led his team to the county championship in 1945 only to be abandoned (in chains) for the final, Philly is to some degree a model of suffering, something he is disinclined to do in silence. As played by Connaughton himself – stooped, gravelly and unswervingly intent – such eternal trials and Greek echoes are intended to make him heroic, while a new battle involves a confrontation with a malevolent figure who seems equally confined to ancient mythic: a property developer.
One of the problems with director Kerry Crabbe’s production for the New Theatre and Richard Ryan Promotions (and there are several) is that it relies on those beleaguered archetypes for resonance and assumes fathomless patience for a character who otherwise seems merely sour. “The past is the past,” Philly is told, to which he responds, “the past is tomorrow” – but little seems at stake today. Rekindling former affronts and offstage rivalries endlessly, Philly is swindled, briskly and with little resistance, into trading his land for a place in a nursing home called the Island, manipulated by two characters (Jack Moylett’s villainous Ronnie and Jemma Curran’s unwilling accomplice Penny) who frequently resemble prompters in a one-man show.
Thick with exposition and colloquial curlicues, the dialogue develops much like the plot, as a matted tangle of elaborations. Every sufferer would like to believe his torments have a purpose but without the hard-earned sense that Philly is a good man brought down by a fatal flaw, or that he must accept something he rebels against, the tragic momentum eludes him.
Twists and allusions arrive in stacks, but nothing budges the sensation that, ultimately, the custodian of this pitch has little to play for. Until Aug 18th.
