"FOLLY THAT!" was a challenge sometimes uttered by Dublin vaudevilleans to the act which was to follow them on to the stage after a successful performance. The same challenge is inevitably levelled at new playwrights after they have made a successful debut. Jimmy Murphy has met the challenge very well by establishing himself as a thoroughly professional dramatist. His second work for the stage does not have the ringing authenticity of Brothers of the Brush, but it is well crafted and provides a satisfying evening of drama set in the social nadir of this city's life. The picture of paradise which he paints for his characters is bleak in the extreme, but is as close to their unrealised fantasies as they are ever likely to get.
We discover Angela Farrell, a compulsive gambler whose addiction has already scattered whatever small financial and emotional fortune the family might once have had, standing in the yard of Our Lady's Mansions as what is left of the family belongings is hurled from the fourth floor flat in which she had hoped to squat. The local residents' committee, itself devastated by the drug abuse of its absent children, and armed with the baseball bat, will not tolerate new settlers in the socially dead flats complex. Angela had hoped to entice her husband Sean home by the pretence that the corporation had allocated a flat to the family, even as their son Declan had an opportunity for a training course that might have led him into gainful employment.
Sean, meanwhile, had taken to making money as a street car parker, under the unreliable auspices of a wino known as the Lord whose decline into alcoholism, self deception and poverty had been precipitated by a personal tragedy. Mr Murphy invites us to look at the collective hopelessness of their situation without ever withhold in either empathy from their self delusions or respect for them as individuals at the bottom of the heap. And, for all the bleakness of their situation, he allows them sympathy and good humour (even comedy) in their extremity.
David Byrne has directed the piece deftly apart from some technically unpersuasive moments at the start, when the family's belongings are purportedly being thrown from the windows above and has ensured lovely performances from his cast. Barbara Brennan's Angela is clearly unable, through no wilful fault of her own, to tell the truth to anyone, even herself. Michael Haves's Declan never wholly loses sight of the prospect of a family recovery, any more than Paul Bennett's Sean can lose sight of the reality of their hopeless situation. And Johnny Murphy's "Lord" skids amiably between any tiny chances he might have in the short term to get out of the gutter. Liam Carney provides the best performance of the night as the hard edged, batwielding, unforgiving member of the residents' committee who has no sympathy left for anyone.
In Barbara Bradshaw's atmospheric setting, well lit by Tony Wakefield, the play has neither the rich comedy of the author's inaugural work, nor it's firsthand authenticity, but it is still well worth seeing as a very good second play after a stunningly good first one.
