Triumph of spectacle over substance

Charlie Murphy in “Arlington.” Photo by Patrick Redmond

 

By Orla O’Sullivan

“I think we should give each other a hug,” Susan Feldman, artistic director of St. Ann’s Warehouse told those who had just seen the U.S. premiere of Enda Walsh’s play “Arlington” at the launch party this week. The dark work is the sixth Walsh production hosted by the large-capacity theatre in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, the last having been the 2016 opera, “The Last Hotel” —a collaboration between Walsh and composer Donnacha Dennehy.

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When Walsh reluctantly took the mike, saying the last speech he had given was at his wedding, he alluded to another collaboration, “Lazarus,” the West End show he did with David Bowie shortly before his death.

“2016 was a very depressing year,” he said, “My mom had died, I was working with someone who was dying, [and] then my best friend died.”

“Arlington” (originally produced with the subtitle “a love story”) was written in reaction, Walsh said. “I had to say something about the human spirit.

“We did it in Galway, we did it the National Theatre in Ireland, but I think we found it here,” said Walsh, who also directed the play.

A chunk of the hundreds of attendees evidently agreed. Perhaps one fifth of the audience followed poet Paul Muldoon’s lead in giving “Arlington” a standing ovation.

As for the hug? Ryan Leach embraced his friend Amanda Roberge after Feldman suggested everyone needed some of that TLC after the disturbing show. Roberge, who works at St. Ann’s said, “We were all wondering backstage what the party would be like. Would everyone be really depressed?”

“When have I ever not wanted a companion to talk with? To share this room and wait for my number to be called,” Isla, the first character we encounter in “Arlington,” asks the man in the control room on the far side of the wall. Like him, we in the audience can see her, whereas Isla can’t see out beyond the walls of her ambiguous waiting area.

Except, that is, for the glimpse outside she got the night before when the curtain covering the one high window in her room was apparently moved, causing her to be even more agitated than usual. But the play will get to that.

Echoing Beckett, “Arlington” starts with a kind of intriguing absurdity. What is this fluorescently lit plain white room with the hard plastic chairs that might be found in a government office or bus station, with its ticket dispenser and fish tank without fish? (It provides a laugh, underpinned by pathos, as inhabitants of this holding area—or we might say goldfish bowl, given the CCTV cameras everywhere—variously add fish food to the tank or engage in the equally futile gesture of squeezing out an ornamental plant, then dropping it back in the water.)

There’s a mad chipper voiceover of small talk in rural Ireland, a refrain played several times in modified form. An innocent inquiry, “How’s Fidelma?” turns slightly sinister. “No one will ever forgive her the time she kicked that dog in Donovan’s.”

Is Isla, played by Charlie Murphy (known, for example from RTE’s “Love/Hate”), in a psych ward, one wonders. Especially so, as she starts a stilted and therefore humorous flirtation with the man at the controls, Hugh O’Conor (whose acting career dates back to playing the young Christy Brown in “My Left Foot). Maybe a broken heart pre-empted her breakdown? Murphy performs an impassioned, drunken romp with a jacket to the tune of “Baby, I Love You” and recalls life in the vibrant city before Big Brother took over.

Except, she’s not recalling it, it turns out, as we learn from a later video montage – one of many often amusing effects in a literally spectacular production. (Kudos to the team of scenic artists and Adam Silverman on lights.)

If spectacle, some witty dialogue, great acting and even more notable dance movement are enough for you, this play should satisfy. Not so, though, if you seek characters in a credible story—true at least to its own logic. “Arlington” lives almost entirely as metaphor, so it is hard to connect with its abstracted characters.

“Arlington” written and directed by Enda Walsh, runs to May 28 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, presented by Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival. Tickets www.stannswarehouse.org, or 718.254.8779.

 

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