The Cherry Orchard meets Dynasty in the latest from Frank McGuinness, perhaps more a play with songs than a fully fledged musical, but certainly tuneful in many ways. It’s undoubtedly the only musical you will ever see where Panis Angelicus becomes a showstopper. But with its raft of characters, it often feels more like an outline for a 24-episode miniseries. Even at just under three hours, there is never time to really get to know or care about the story’s largely unhappy and disagreeable family.
Irene Day (Siobhán McCarthy) is “the queen of country in the Emerald Isle”. Or she was. Times and tastes are changing and Irene’s concerts no longer attract the crowds. The Donegal restaurant and bar built on the back of her success are failing. Her husband, Conor (Frank Laverty), who has always run the business keeping his cards close to his chest, knows they are going down. With the entire extended clan, from Irene’s poison-mouthed mother, Magdalene (Deirdre Donnelly), to her daughter Triona (Ruth McGill), all relying on the income, things look desperate.
But the return of Irene’s son Jackie (Killian Donnelly) from the US, where he has forged his own successful country music career, could be the saving grace. Will Jackie offer the bailout needed, and if he does, will the piper call the tune? Exactly who in this manipulative, squabbling family is allowed a chance to sing? The past has to be thoroughly raked over before we know the answer, so that resentments and tensions – from Jackie’s homosexuality to bad parenting – can get an airing.
There are pleasures here, in particular Kevin Doherty’s music and a cast of seasoned musical theatre performers who reveal unexpected depths to their characters every time they sing. The musical and spoken account of how Triona’s husband, Liam (Keith McErlean), lost his voice, wrapped around a rendition of Carrickfergus, is gripping. The songs are always used in interesting ways, not to move the action along but to highlight what is hidden, and express what will never be said, rather like a code. Sometimes it feels as if the entire play is a code for Ireland itself.
Donegal turns into one of those plays where, in the dying moments, some of the characters make clunky speeches in an attempt to explain what it all means. Irene’s watchful alcoholic sister, Joanne (Eleanor Methven), who acts as a skivvy for the family, suddenly discovers her tongue: “Who could we blame for our present woes? Will it ever be ourselves? We’d flog our souls as quickly as we’d swipe the green flag wrapped around us. We no longer own the shirt on our backs.”
The design and staging hint at, but never quite play to the real possibilities of, a concert-cum-play, but the cast are terrific, capturing all the restless energy of the terminally discontented, who are destined to self-destruct rather than face up to change.
- At the Abbey theatre, Dublin, until 19 November. Box office: +353 1 878 7222.
