THAT'S AN awful lot of space for one mere mortal to fill up. The stage that has been created at St Ann's Warehouse for Misterman– Enda Walsh's gripping (as in by the throat) monologue of a play – looks to be roughly half the size of a football field. And Cillian Murphy, the sole and slender actor who appears in it, is definitely not as big as your average football player.
Almost from the start of this breathless tale of an Irish village called Inishfree, which opened on Sunday night, the electrifying Murphy seems to inhabit every millimetre of the vast and cluttered wasteland in which he has been let loose. And it’s not just because of all that running he does from one end of the stage to the other.
You know how they say God is everywhere? Well, that’s sort of the impression Thomas, Murphy’s character, gives too. The comparison comes naturally, since Thomas is on speaking terms with the Lord. You could even say this young man is doing his own version of Genesis by creating the world in his own image. But don’t expect Thomas Magill to step back to regard his achievement serenely and call it good. Inishfree is anything but Eden.
Walsh, one of the most fiercely individual voices in theatre today, writes plays in which people are condemned to repeat the past – not because they can't recall it, as George Santayana had it, but because they can. His Bedbound, seen here in 2003, portrays a shut-in father and daughter, in bed together for eternity, for whom talking about what brought them there is an all-consuming addiction. The Walworth Farce(2006) shows a father and sons who keep acting out a life-changing chapter in their shared history via ludicrously homespun theatrics.
Misterman, first staged in an earlier version in 1999 (with Walsh playing Thomas), traces a similar pattern, but on an ontologically immense canvas. Well, the earthly side is pretty big too.
The set which designer Jamie Vartan has come up with as Thomas’s playground looks like one of those abandoned factories on crime shows where kidnappers hold victims. There’s rusting metal scaffolding and exposed cables and cold expanse of stained floor.
But other, less typical details come into focus: a disembodied suit of clothes on a hanger, a row of crosses made of soda cans and a variety of tape players and recorders. These are the tools by which Thomas, with the focus of an autistic child, summons a single, cataclysmic day of his life into being. For Thomas, it appears, has been his own recording angel. All those machines have been set to spew out the sounds of quotidian village life: cars, birds and barking dogs. Above all barking dogs, which for Thomas come to assume the aspect of hounds of hell.
Thomas has affectionate and exasperated conversations with his mother, and as for the other townfolk of Inishfree – from a smutty garage man to a flirtatious restaurant hostess – he embodies them all himself.
For Thomas, as for many of Walsh's characters, the story he tells is his prison, a labyrinth in which he'll wander for eternity. Or to be exact, eternity as captured in that one day, in which Thomas follows the usual routine of buying his mummy's favourite cookies, visiting his father's grave and chatting with locals. And taking a disastrous side trip with a visiting angel. I'm reluctant to be more specific on his itinerary. Reduced to a bald plot summary, his story is a lurid tale of a disturbed mind – the kind regularly anatomised on Law & Orderand CSI.But Walsh, Murphy and a brilliant creative team have translated one disturbed mind into a complete physical universe.
Thomas’s monologue is a combination of sacred and fleshly imagery, with lofty biblical cadences wrestling with the nagging patterns of daily speech on petty subjects. His talk seesaws between heaven and hell. You don’t doubt Murphy’s ability to cross into both of these realms. His Thomas is a seductive and terrifying portrait of innocence turned toxic, of a luminous madness that dares you not to look away.
Murphy also gives complete and specific life to the various other characters Thomas encounters. One of these could be said to be God himself. When Thomas feels the Almighty’s hand upon his shoulder, that’s only his own hand he’s placed there. But the blaze of Murphy’s gaze is so compelling, you have to look twice to make sure the Holy Ghost itself – or its infernal equivalent – hasn’t made a sudden guest appearance.
Mistermanis at St Ann's Warehouse, Water Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn, until December 21st