Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
4 stars
Like bad dreams, the colour of memory plays tricks. So it is in Cork writer Ailis Ni Riain’s heartbreaking little play. A co-production between The New Works, the Liverpool based company formerly known as LLT, and Cork’s Granary Theatre, this is a crucial last-minute addition to The Citz Circle Studio programme that has to be seen.
Ni Riain lays bare the scarred psyches of three battered siblings as they attempt to come to terms with a shared past dominated by a brutalising father who broke them and their mother in very different ways. Where tough guy Olan recognised his own hand-me-down violence enough to flee, poor wasted Eanna was too weak even for that. Only Airnin, possessed with what Olan observes as the ‘madness’ of her abused mother, is left behind to re-live every punch.
Grim stuff, for sure, but rather than some gritty realist assault, Ni Riain has constructed a thing of sad, haunted beauty and inherent musicality. Each rapid-fire phrase pummels the air in a series of blistering crescendos, passed around the family like a choral litany. In truth it’s an elegy to their own lost lives, building to a symphony fuelled by love and anger.
Graeme Maley’s spare, wide-open production accentuates the poetry, as his brilliant young actors Rachel O’Shea, Aidan O’Hare and Hannah Burke circle each other, sharing short-hand intimacies like some rediscovered children’s game they were cruelly robbed of.
Clocking in just shy of 45 minutes, anyone interested in serious theatre writing should flock to this perfectly formed miniature. Here is a major writer in the making in a production that gives it space enough to breathe beyond the ugliness it purges.
The Herald, May 4th 2007
ends
4 stars
Like bad dreams, the colour of memory plays tricks. So it is in Cork writer Ailis Ni Riain’s heartbreaking little play. A co-production between The New Works, the Liverpool based company formerly known as LLT, and Cork’s Granary Theatre, this is a crucial last-minute addition to The Citz Circle Studio programme that has to be seen.
Ni Riain lays bare the scarred psyches of three battered siblings as they attempt to come to terms with a shared past dominated by a brutalising father who broke them and their mother in very different ways. Where tough guy Olan recognised his own hand-me-down violence enough to flee, poor wasted Eanna was too weak even for that. Only Airnin, possessed with what Olan observes as the ‘madness’ of her abused mother, is left behind to re-live every punch.
Grim stuff, for sure, but rather than some gritty realist assault, Ni Riain has constructed a thing of sad, haunted beauty and inherent musicality. Each rapid-fire phrase pummels the air in a series of blistering crescendos, passed around the family like a choral litany. In truth it’s an elegy to their own lost lives, building to a symphony fuelled by love and anger.
Graeme Maley’s spare, wide-open production accentuates the poetry, as his brilliant young actors Rachel O’Shea, Aidan O’Hare and Hannah Burke circle each other, sharing short-hand intimacies like some rediscovered children’s game they were cruelly robbed of.
Clocking in just shy of 45 minutes, anyone interested in serious theatre writing should flock to this perfectly formed miniature. Here is a major writer in the making in a production that gives it space enough to breathe beyond the ugliness it purges.
The Herald, May 4th 2007
ends
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