Tron
Theatre, Glasgow
Four
Stars
The
Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland was founded by the late Dr Ian
Paisley in 1971. This was a year before playwright John McCann was born in
Portadown, County Armagh, the so-called ecclesiastical capital of Ireland some
twenty-four miles from Belfast.
This
is partly the drive behind McCann’s monologue, which he performs himself
following last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe run, and which on its current tour
is being updated on the hoof as anecdotes and real life events run on apace.
The
prime motivation, however, was the result of the 2016 EU referendum, and the
increasing power the DUP seemed to wield in Westminster. Then there was the
conversation he had in an Edinburgh pub five years ago, during which he
discovered just how little those outside of Northern Ireland know about the day
to day activities of the party. Out of this comes a prodigal’s pilgrimage
to McCann’s birthplace from his home in Scotland to find out why any of this
matters.
Armed
with only a bible and a megaphone, McCann intersperses his meditations with
recordings, both of archive radio segments, and interviews he conducted during
his various trips home. The former allows the audience to hear the DUP’s views
from the horse’s mouth in all the part’s at times jaw-dropping reactionary
stance. The latter, conducted with activists and bridge-makers on the front
line, are infinitely more hopeful.
As
with hit TV sitcom, Derry Girls, McCann’s show mines material about Northern
Ireland and the Troubles which up until fairly recently might have been considered
too hot to handle on a public platform. A riff on how to tell the difference
between a Catholic and a Protestant - mythological or otherwise - predates a
similar scene in the current run of the programme, and is just as comical.
In
the current political climate, the ending may be as uncertain as everything else
going on in the world. By bringing things so close to home, however, McCann, at
least, seems to have found a very personal kind of peace.
The Herald, April 8th 2019
ends
Comments