Madeira: Secrets of Sisters
Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, Dublin
★★★☆☆
Madeira: Secrets of Sisters, by Michael J Harnett, is a small, homespun three-act play focusing on the relationships between two pairs of sisters who meet for coffee with a sense of routine obligation only for truths left unsaid for decades to come to light unexpectedly.
Geraldine Plunkett and Deirdre Monaghan open the show in the roles of Angela and Betty. Though their ages are left indeterminate, they are likely to be in their 70s, with a background in Ireland’s Protestant ascendancy; albeit that their family suffered financial setbacks later on, the women’s reminiscences involve a large family home, replete with domestic servants.
Taking their seats in the cafe, Angela is well dressed, fashionable even, while Betty looks more subdued. These superficial indicators belie the dynamic set in motion as soon as they sit down: Betty begins to unravel the convenient half-truths about their parents that the sisters have maintained. Her more combative, honest persona stems from a change in her circumstances: as Betty reveals, she has been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Following Angela and Betty are Mona and Lu, played by Brenda Brooks and, in a bold move by Vinnie McCabe, the production’s director, Deirdre Monaghan once again. Despite the duplication of one half of the casting, this pair of sisters are, on the face of things, utterly at odds with the previous duo. Mona and Lu are younger by at least two decades, and they speak with very different accents, having grown up in a working-class household in north Dublin.
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As before, however, a moment of reflective clarity visits the sisters during their conversation, this time elicited by Mona’s recent separation and stint in counselling. Mona’s newfound insights give her the tools to penetrate her sister’s emotional barriers, prompting the release of a secret trauma that Lu buried years ago. With this confession the pair discover a new intimacy, and they examine the inadequacies of their married lives with an almost giddy sense of freedom.
The relationships dovetail in the third act, when Angela and Mona spend a moment together in the play’s final scene. United after a momentary interaction reveals that one of the cleaners employed in Angela and Betty’s well-to-do home was none other than Mona and Lu’s mother, Angela – now bereaved – and Mona discuss their sisters, migrating into a conversation about themselves and their struggles to feel entitled to happiness.
A madeira, if you don’t know, is a dense English sponge cake, originally meant to be dipped in Madeira wine, that has been a staple of afternoon tea – in other words, it connotes a sense of orthodoxy, of lifeless bourgeois rules, not to mention blandness. A madeira is a boring desert, Betty exclaims in the first act. But, she notes, it is also a place: a Portuguese island, off the coast of Morocco, that is shaped by volcanic activity, rife with verdant cliffs.
This duality is the heart of the play: while our personal, domestic lives can feel dull and uninspired, another world is always possible. All one need do is realise that it has been there all along.
Though the writing is occasionally quagmired by cliche, the production is executed without misstep and features some excellent acting. At 60 minutes, the time flies.
Madeira: Secrets of Sisters continues at Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, Dublin, until Saturday, February 1st
