Despite its 20th-century content and texture, somewhere at the heart of actress-playwright Liz Kuti's odd, beautiful little play is a 19th-century novel. It begins awkwardly with the twin, intercutting monologues of two women: old Magda in her 70s, fretting in a retirement home; and Eva, a much younger woman, raking over unresolved anger after her father's funeral. These interrupted narratives prevent much sense-making at first, but they resolve into clear scenarios.
Eva tells an almost vindictive tale of her perceived betrayal at the hands of her father. After her mother had mysteriously fled the marriage, the man eventually found another lover, thus displacing Eva in his affections. Cutting across this testimony is the older woman's regretful reminiscence of events half a century ago, in Nazi-occupied Europe. When she was a girl, her father sheltered a Jewish boy whom she befriended and plotted to marry.
After a hesitant start, the piece builds into an affecting crescendo under Jason Byrne's head-on direction. The link between the two women gradually dawns, and with it, the resolution of the unpleasant little mystery of the failed marriage. There are times when, as Eva, Morna Regan's knife-keen, Ulster-accented delivery of her monologue seems to come from another play entirely - say, in her chilling Northern tones, talking of "our territory" and "recovering the clarity of my hatred".
As the older Magda, Stella McCusker beautifully manages her defeated, German-accented soliloquoys. The other actors are encouraged to speak in their own accents, by turns English and flat Dublin. In this, and the staging, the audience is asked to go along with a lot of theatrical shorthand, and the folk-tale abstraction of the writing often doesn't help. Nonetheless, engage with this well-produced play, and you will be deeply moved in several directions, not least at the way trauma can shatter across generations.
Until May 13. Box office: 00-353-1-8787 222.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
