The ancient gods were on Frank McGuiness’ side when he
wrote The Match Box, his classically inspired but devastatingly contemporary
one-woman play revived this week for a short Scottish tour by the Borders-based
Firebrand Theatre Company. Charting the slow-burning aftermath of a 12-year-old
girl’s killing, the audience sees this through the mind of her mother, Sal, who
has fled the city for a cottage in an isolated rural wilderness. During the
revelations that emerge, McGuinness’ play evolves into something as darkly
poetic as his work for larger casts such as Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching
Towards the Somme and Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. The simmering fury of
bereaved mother Sal, however, seems to tap into a more recognisably current
malaise.
“It started in the rehearsal room of the Everyman
Theatre in Liverpool,” says McGuinness, telling the story behind the story with
a suitably epic sweep. “I was busy working on a musical, and the Everyman and Playhouse
were looking for a new one-woman piece. Somewhat fortuitously, my friend Lia
Williams was looking to direct something, so we came as a package.”
McGuinness is in his room at University College Dublin
where he lectures in English, when he says all this. All his marking is done,
and, preparing for the new semester, he can take the time to reflect on the
real roots of the play. These are two-fold.
“The idea actually came about a couple of years
before,” he says. “I was doing a production of my version of Hecuba by
Euripides, which is a furious play about a mother’s revenge after losing a
child in the most horrific of circumstances. I thought Euripides’ play was one
of the most passionate portrayals of the survival urge I’d ever seen in the
theatre. I wondered how you might do that in a modern context, and slowly but
surely the story emerged.”
Real life events close to home also left their mark.
“There was something that happened in Liverpool,” McGuiness
remembers. “A child was murdered, and there was a terrible cover-up. I used
that incident as a jumping off point to look at how grief can consume you, and
make you capable of anything.”
Although he doesn’t mention it by name, McGuiness is
probably referring to the case of 11-year old Rhys Jones, who was tragically
murdered in 2007 by killers protected by a wall of silence. There are plenty of
others as well which mark a disturbing rise in gun culture. The recent TV
drama, Little Boy Blue, was based on the case.
Williams’ production of The Match Box, featuring
Leanne Best as Sal, premiered in the intimate confines of Liverpool Playhouse
Studio in 2012, before transferring to the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn. A new
production directed by Joan Sheehy was seen three years later as part of Galway
International Arts Festival. With Cathy Belton as Sal, it was described in the
Herald as ‘a searingly powerful piece of work.’
“Having seen the two productions, what struck me instantly
was how radically different they were, but how volatile they were with it,”
says McGuinness. “It scares the s*** out of me when I see the amount of rage
that comes out of it. You see a lot of petty bickering and me-me-me-ness
elsewhere, but I don’t think that taps into the same depths as the woman in
this play does. You have to remember that when someone loses a child, especially
in the way that Sal does here, they can sink into extraordinary depths of
grief, and there’s a danger there that it can drive people to take extreme
action.”
McGuinness has reinvented classic Greek plays several
times as he has done with The Match Box, albeit in more straightforward
adaptations. As well as looking at Hecuba, he has penned versions of Electra
and Oedipus, both drawn from Sophocles’ canon, as well as taking a look at
another Euripides play, Helen.
McGuinness’ work was last seen in Scotland by way of a
touring revival of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, his
First World War set play that visited the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow in a
production. Prior to that, Rachel O’Riordan directed Someone Who’ll Watch Over
Me at Perth Theatre.
McGuinness is no stranger to Scotland on a personal
level either. He is great friends with actress Maureen Beattie, who he met in
1989 when they worked together on McGuinness’ play, Mary and Lizzie, at the
Royal Shakespeare Company.
“One of the first shows I ever saw was Francie and
Josie,” he says. “and I’ve family in Dunblane and Dumbarton, as well as friends
in Edinburgh. One of the reasons why Maureen and I bonded was that she was born
when her father Johnny was on tour in Ireland, so we were born within a few hours
of each other in County Donegal. But I’m delighted the show is going on in
Scotland. Firebrand are a good company.”
Richard Baron’s production of The Match Box comes hot on
the heels of him overseeing a revival of Rona Munro’s Belfast-set play, Bold
Girls, at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow. For The Match Box, Baron’s production
will feature Janet Coulson as Sal in a play which provides no safety net for
the sole performer onstage throughout the play’s 90-minute duration. Coulson
last appeared with Firebrand in another solo work, George Brandt’s play,
Grounded.
The Match Box is the latest example of Firebrand’s
efforts to create contemporary theatre in the Borders. Focusing on revivals of
works by living writers, the company launched several years ago with a look at
Talking Heads, Alan Bennett’s series of monologues first seen on TV. This was
followed by productions of David Greig’s Being Norwegian, whose plays Letter of
Last Resort and Outlying Islands have also been produced by Firebrand. The
company have taken fresh looks at Oleanna by David Mamet and White Rose by
Peter Arnott, as well as new takes on Rona Munro’s play, Iron, and 54% Acrylic
by David Harrower, and The Great Train Race by Robert Dawson Scott.
As with its previous outings, The Match Box is an
incendiary gift to any actress who takes it on.
“I think if it goes well,” says McGuinness says of
Firebrand’s new production, “it’s going to be a performance of such integrity
and intimacy that you won’t forget it. It’s a play about love, the things love
can make you do, and the extremes that can take you.”
The Match Box, Byre Theatre, St Andrew’s, February
1-3; Birnam Arts, Birnam, February 7; Heart of Hawick, Hawick, February 10;
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, February 13-17; Citizens Theatre, Glasgow,
February 20-24.
The Herald, February 1st 2018
ends
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