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PRESENTED BY INDA UK SIVE
Written by John B. Keane Directed by Tom Begley
WHITE BEAR THEATRE
March 11 – 30, 2008
A review by Maddy Ryle for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Any production that has a real turf fire burning on stage and a cast who hand out slices of soda bread as you take your seat has already gone quite a long way to winning over its audiences’ hearts. As anyone who has read John B. Keane will know, his work is deeply infused with the Irish spirit that is conjured up by such a welcome. But while being full of the lyricism that marks Keane’s writing, Sive is fortunately not on overly sentimentalised tale, and the passionate cast of Inda UK theatre company do a good job of bringing out the humanity of this story. The acting space at the White Bear theatre is small – about the size of a rural Irish kitchen in a 1950s cottage. So it makes an ideal setting for Sive, the drama of which takes place entirely within such a room. With no raised seating, you really do feel you are in the kitchen with the characters, which is perfect for a play that expresses itself largely through its dialogue. Sive (played by Lucy De Brún) is the illegitimate child of a dead mother, now being raised by her weak uncle Mike and astoundingly bitter step-mother Mena. Her only familial ally is her grandmother, also an extremely bitter woman who exchanges no soft words whatsoever with her son or daughter-in-law throughout the entire play. Keane, as was his wont, presents a picture of the hard edge of rural Irish poverty. Much of his other work tells the tale of Irish immigration to Britain – in this play we see the life from which many of those emigrants were fleeing. Mike (John Casey) is a turf-cutter and small-holder who, like much of his class, fights for every penny he can make. Having made a promise to his dying sister, he has insisted on sending Sive to the local convent school. Mena – wonderfully and energetically played by Susan Cummins – as a childless woman who has worked all her life, is appalled by this special treatment and nags Sive constantly about the economic burden she represents. Enter Tomasheen Sean Rúa, one of a dying breed of matchmakers still roaming the countryside, arranging marriages to make his living. In his repulsively leering way, he appeals to Mena’s avarice and convinces her to be his partner is marrying Sive (aged perhaps 14 or 15) off to a local, wealthy, but completely ancient farmer, Sean Dotá. A conspiracy now forms around Sive and her grandmother which make the match an inevitability, and the drama of the tale lies in the examination of humanity and society in the weeks leading up to the wedding night. Keane was a wordsmith who wanted to convey the richness of Irish speech to his audience, so the script creates a layer of poetic and lyrical drama overlying the realism of the plot. Having read some of his novels, I think his dialogue works better in the mouths of actors than it does on the printed page. His style does mean there is an inevitable aspect of caricature about his representation of rural folk. For example we have Tomasheen, the greedy scoundrel and his accomplice Mena, the embittered, barren stepmother; Mike, the flawed but essentially sympathetic breadwinner, is no match for the manipulation of this pair. Keane also brings in an Irish idiosyncrasy with the two tinker characters – Pats Bocock (Seán Brosnan) and his daughter Cathleen (Katherine Pageon) – who have the function of a Greek chorus, relaying the tale of Sive’s woe and cursing the mean spirit of Tomasheen through their songs. However, while these characters do risk appearing one-dimensional, we are also given to understand the social circumstances which have shaped them, and the joy of the language and the energy of the cast make this a very entertaining portrayal of a way of life threatened with extinction. My biggest criticism is the lack of depth to Sive herself. De Brún has a hard task to create a meaningful and empathetic personality out of Keane’s material, which leaves Sive as merely an innocent victim of circumstance rather than a fully-fledged character with whom we can relate on an emotional level. The absolute volume of dialogue which the audience must absorb, moreover, with no change of scenery and little actual movement (and in the occasional dubious Irish accent), also makes the first half a little exhausting towards the end. The second part felt much fresher as the narrative is driven forward at a faster pace and there is a greater variety in the action. I’m a big fan of all things Irish, so this play appealed to my heart from the outset. The cast work brilliantly together under Begley’s direction to bring the script to life, and John Morrissey (Tomasheen) and Susan Cummins are particularly noteworthy for the vitality of their performances. Keane’s style is a little stilted, but if you take this production at face value you will come away wonderfully charmed.
White Bear Theatre, Tues – Sat 7.30pm; Sun 5pm To book tickets call 07960 332846 Box Office: 020 7793 9193
http://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/
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