The Map of Argentina
An Taibhdhearc, Galway
★★★★☆
There’s a lot going on in this Marina Carr premiere, directed by Andrew Flynn for Decadent Theatre Company and Galway Arts Centre.
Deb (Maeve Fitzgerald) is about 40 and married to Sam (Mark Huberman), with five children and a life of school concerts and daily domestic juggles. In her other life she has fallen madly, compulsively, blindly in love with Darby (Fionn Ó Loingsigh). Highly strung scenes of sexual desire and forbidden passion contrast with funny and warm evocations of family life.
Contemplating shattering this for a grand passion, Sam’s mother, Laura (Bríd Ní Neachtain), and Deb’s dying father (Daniel Reardon) serve as lessons about the consequences and regrets flowing from such momentous decisions, however they fall. The stakes are high and the passions sometimes overwrought as all three at the centre of the affair thrash out the future and the indecision.
Ciaran Bagnall’s set is flexible and contemporary, with sliding doors and modular furniture; the openness and lack of deceit about the infidelity feel contemporary too. The world views are age-old, old-fashioned. For her husband, her lover, her father, it’s all about them, about control, the competition between two men. “I want you.” “I know what I want.” “How dare you do this to me?” There’s talk of men desiring other men’s wives and of “not wanting my grandchildren to be from a broken home”.
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For Deb, though, this is about carving out something for herself before she dies, after years of wifehood, motherhood. As she and Sam anguish about her compulsive infidelity she observes: “I feel I’m being unfaithful to myself.” She knows she will pay for this. But she also knows it will burn itself out, asking her husband for “one year” and then she’ll return.
The performances, particularly Fitzgerald’s, are strong. The young actors – Elise Broderick, Aliannah O’Grady, Art Brophy, Fionnuala Barrett, Ely Solan – play a blinder depicting the squabbles, whining, yearning, manipulation, irritations and fun of a large brood.
The Map of Argentina is not from a new script – it was published in the third volume of Carr’s plays in 2015 – but its drama clutches you to its chest and holds you throughout. It might benefit, however, from being pared back somewhat, with the advantage of not breaking the tension with an interval. High production values include an original score by Carl Kennedy (although it’s perhaps too loud with such high-octane drama onstage).
Flynn knits together with assurance the several worlds in this naturalistic, sometimes melodramatic story: the humour and domestic realism, the electric passion of the lovers and the love/venom of the 22-year-old marriage, the elaborate cautionary tales from their parents’ past lives. Part of the latter involves the surreal dream-memory segments with Sam’s mother and the Argentinian (Michael Cruz) that give the play its name. The scenes and the details are funny and grotesque, odd and almost random, and though you’re left wondering if they work, their thematic significance is strong.
The Map of Argentina is at An Taibhdhearc, as part of Galway International Arts Festival, until Saturday, July 27th
