In an age that must confront rape (current) and abuse (past and present) John B. Keane's story of a young girl sold into marriage by unscrupulous kin should reverberate with contemporary significance. In a piece that celebrates the language of rural savagery, we require some sense of historical context. Regrettably, neither is encompassed in this insipid production (by Brown Penny from Cork).
The problems start with Catherine Mulvihill's scrubbed stage. Sive's story has to be enacted in a setting that explicitly signals the rapaciousness of peasants clawing up a spindly economic ladder. Mena Glavin (Sandie Sheridan), the passionate queen of flesh barter, presides, in this production, over a holiday cottage. One cannot believe that these people need to fetch water from a well.
The problems continue with Lee Lucey's costumes - verging on provincial chic; redeemed only partially by the rags of the tinkers and, in the final moments, by Sive's bogsodden dress.
The direction skates on the surface, fluctuating between muted responses and the throwing of vocal shapes. The comedy concedes to buffoonery, although Gary Murphy's Thomsheen touches some menacing spots. Christine Horgan's Sive does not manage the transition from schoolgirl to woman. But when the acting comes from the heart (in Anne-Marie Byrne's dignified Nanna Glavin; in the visceral singing of Conor Tallon's Cartalawn; in the magnificently-managed closing moments, as Eoin Slattery's Scuab confronts his lover's destroyers) it begins to tap the Keane magic. Too little, too late.
Runs until tomorrow; to book phone 01-4627477. Then tours to Portlaoise (Monday to Wednesday) and Mullingar, March 2nd-March 4th.
