Frank McGuinness's Mutabilitie is an extraordinarily ambitious work, full of fleeting metaphors and literary allusions, in its complex totality perhaps a metaphor of the tortured relationships between the differing religions and cultures of Ireland and England and how both art and love can transcend the immediacies of conflict. If that sounds like a heavy night of theatre, so be it. The play insists on the closest of attention throughout and, if the concentration is not fully rewarded in dramatic terms, the experience remains absorbing and worthwhile in this, its first Irish production, fluidly directed by Michael Caven for the Theatreworks Company. It received its first production in the Royal National Theatre in London where the reviews were unenthusiastic.
It is a difficult play, and it may be that, with some subtle dramaturgical intervention to help it flow more cogently, and a less murkily lit and better signalled production, it could become a classic of dramatic literature. It has plenty of meat for the mind and ample feeling for the soul if only it could resist going up some literary and intellectual byways.
Ostensibly it is set in Munster, when Edmund Spenser was living there and trying to write The Faerie Queene and failing to win the Irish to his necessarily Protestant salvation. In Michael Wade's drystick and committed performance he comes across as a man of insufferable condescension. Meanwhile, amid war and mayhem, the old Gaelic society was breaking (and being broken) down and Brian McGrath's old King Sweney, who could fly in his mind, was irascible and inconsistent, lovingly supported by his wife Maeve, played with assured strength by Fedelma Cullen, and their three grown-up children, Denis Conway as the sturdy Hugh who has infiltrated Spenser's castle with lissome File (as in poet) played by Liz Schwarz, Michael Patric as his brother Niall and Lucianne McEvoy as their sister.
Enter three daft theatricals - Ben (Jonathan White in wonderful uncertainty as to why they are there at all), Richard (David Cairnduff) his lover, and William (Jude Sweeney) who is identified by File as the man from the river, the bard of Avon, who is to save Ireland by writing a play. File also does a good job of seducing Elizabeth (Sharon Hogan), Spenser's wife, both politically and sexually. Whimsy it may be, but none the less serious for that in the author's mind. The acting is excellent, if occasionally uneven. The play is profound and occasionally funny but ultimately lacks a dramatic punch and eventually makes several unsuccessful attempts to find a theatrical conclusion. But it's well worth seeing by any who wish to experience a genuine theatrical imagination at work.
Booking at (01) 608 2461. Nightly at 8.00, matinee Saturday 2.30pm. Runs until September 23rd
