A highly strung dinner-party host looks set for an evening of disappointments in Brian Watkins’ new play for Druid Theatre. As eight guests arrive to Morkan’s (Marie Mullen) snowbound house on 6 January, they are unsure what is expected of them. Instructions to prepare a party piece have been ignored, and the guest of honour is missing. Worse, nobody can remember what the feast of the Epiphany is all about.
While Watkins’ starting point was James Joyce’s short story, The Dead, director Garry Hynes’ initially comic production is set in the present, on the outskirts of a multi-ethnic city. The conversations of the bewildered guests, who are played by a cast of Irish, American and British actors, buzz with contemporary anxieties, from global heating to consumerism, emotional truth versus empirical verification.
Joyce’s depiction of a grief-tinged winter gathering is joined by other echoes, from Chekhov to Beckett to Tom Murphy. Led by a psychiatrist, Sam (Kate Kennedy), and a surprise guest, Aran (Grace Byers), these characters talk their way into philosophical smoke rings. Tasked with reinventing a tradition, they’re questioning what it means to commune for a ritual in a post-religious world.
Designer Francis O’Connor’s imposing three-storey staircase creates an awareness of absences, which deepens as the party progresses. The origins in the Joyce story hang heavily over a late revelation, its emotional impact diluted by a sense of contrivance. Amid some underdeveloped characterisations, the most sparkling moments come whenever the ill-assorted guests react in unison, forming a Buñuelian chorus. When Morkan invites them to dance with each other, the disconnection they’ve been discussing is perfectly embodied in their aghast refusal to move from the dinner table. It’s an epiphany, of sorts.
At Town Hall theatre, Galway, until 27 July as part of Galway international arts festival.
