Margot (played by Olwen Fouere) is in a crisis; she has lost faith in herself as a doctor and as a woman. Her unhappiness is directly traceable to her chaotic relationship with her adult daughter.
Meanwhile Angela (Catherine Mack), currently a photographic artist specialising in human mouths, believes in the hard sell. She is determined to protect herself from intimacy and the vulnerability it creates. As expected, circumstances bring the two women together, initially physically, eventually emotionally. Elsewhere a young man is determined to escape his father's tyranny, while God, courtesy of a large video screen, offers candidly unsettling observations on the future of the world.
Chris Lee's play, The Electrocution Of Children which opens at the Peacock Theatre on Wednesday - with preview performances this afternoon, tonight, Monday and Tuesday - certainly places the tricky business of modern life, particularly parent/child relations bluntly in the world of psychotherapy. Pacey, self-contained scenes, underlined by comedy, piece together the story. Lee (33) does not believe in unnecessary detail. This play does not rely on the usual devices to place it in a cultural context. It could be anywhere; the time is clearly now, with the end of the century and the end of the millennium in sight.
Nor is the language either romantic or literary. His is an emphatically urban sensibility. It is of the moment; speech as spoken. The dialogue is sharp, punchy, wised-up; the humour is black - yet despite its blackness and also the grimness of the title, the play is ultimately and deliberately, hopeful. At the heart of the play is an over-riding fear, that of being found out by your child. In addition to the therapist's countering of the abrasively distraught Margot's insults by pointing out that "these sessions are a demonstration that you are trying to find a way out of your misery", Lee leaves the audience convinced that his characters, particularly Margot, are intent on solutions, however drastic. Having already been asked if the play has anything to do with the torture of children, Lee does not mind my mentioning that the key to the title is contained in Margot's closing speech, the longest in the play.
Two of Lee's previous plays, Hummingbird and The Optimist's Daughters have been staged in London where he works as a psychiatric social worker. The Electrocution Of Children is his first play to be staged in his native Dublin where he graduated in 1986 with a degree in English. His interest in theatre began at UCD where he wrote and directed, having quickly discovered "I was not an actor and that my talents lay elsewhere". He agrees his plays have been informed by his social work, and another recent play, Wimps And Nazis, will be staged in London later this year. His radio drama, The Parallax Of Jan Van Eyck, has been recorded by RTE.
Agreeing he has made a determined effort to avoid so many of the standard elements of Irish theatre, Lee, who reads "lots of plays" and admires Tom Murphy and Marina Carr, says: "I have found however that the voice of the Irish father keeps surfacing in my work."
