Drama at Inish: Good Performances Rescue this Drama at the OLT.
Drama At Inish is a trifle of a play which seeks to wrest a full evening’s entertainment out of a trifle of a situation. As such, it poses a challenge to anyone attempting it.
Lennox Robinson’s 81-year-old comedy has to do with an Irish seaside town and the impact on it of a travelling theatre troupe which has no intention of providing the kind of light summer entertainment to which it has become accustomed. Instead the townsfolk get a diet of gloom and doom — Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg — and their reaction to what they see on stage casts a pall over the community even as people continue flocking to the performances.
This leads to upheavals in relationships, criminal acts, attempts at suicide: the town seems to be undergoing a collective psychological meltdown thanks to the lack of sunshine in their summer theatre’s programming. The last straw comes when a local politician, obsessed with Ibsen’s The Enemy Of The People and the spectacle of one individual bravely defying the System, votes against the government and in so doing brings about its collapse.
The play is essentially a succession of variations on one basic situation, and it’s in constant danger of wearing out its welcome. Yet, it proved to be a sleeper hit at the Shaw Festival a couple of seasons ago — and that both pleased and surprised the festival’s management whose uncertainty about this play’s box-office appeal had led it to budget it very conservatively.
Ottawa Little Theatre’s revival works because it shows the good sense to build on the play’s main strength — the gallery of neatly defined characters assembled for our enjoyment.
Director Sarah Hearn does maintain a good momentum, leaving us less time to think too hard about the dramatic material. And her production has a nice sense of time and place, a mood enhanced by designer Robin Riddihough’ picturesque recreation of a sitting room in the Seaview Hotel. But most importantly, proceedings are enlivened by some engaging, responsive performances.
The always dependable Mike Kennedy delivers a jovial, extroverted portrayal of John Twohig, hotelkeeper and local impresario who causes all the fuss and bother with his decision to go “serious” with the fare at his summer pavilion. Janet Uren delivers a performance of genuine warmth as his wise and good-hearted wife Annie, and Margaret Harvey-O’Kelly is appropriately frazzled as the sister who manages the hotel.
Michael Guest and Cristina Kindl have the right touch of mannered flamboyance for the public persona of the actor-manager team responsible for the summer’s high-faluting playbill, but they also show another, more human side in their private moments. Kudos as well to Patrick Cullen, very convincing as the floundering, tongue-tied politician; to Susanna Doherty as a prototype Irish maid; to Andy Moggridge as a scampering bootboy with ambitions to become an actor; and to Dana Truelove and Kurt Shantz, genuinely likeable as a couple whose progress to the altar is something of a hesitation waltz.
Even so, this is pretty wispy entertainment, with an impact which lasts about as long as a mouth full of cotton candy.
Drama at Inish continues at Ottawa Little Theatre to April 12.
Drama at Inish
By Lennox Robinson
Ottawa Little Theatre/Tara Players co-production
Director: Sarah Hearn
Set: Robin Riddihough
Lighting: David Magladry
Sound: Mike Heffernan
Costumes: Monica Browness
Cast:
Lizzie Twohig…………………………………………Margaret Harvey-O’Kelly
Helena…………………………………………………Susanna Doherty
Christine Lambert……………………………………..Dana Truelove
Eddie Twohig………………………………………….Kurt Shantz
John Twohig………………………………………… Mike Kennedy
Constance Constantia…………………………………Cristina Kindl
Hector De La Mare……………………………………Michael Guest
Annie Twohig…………………………………………Janet Uren
Peter Hurley…………………………………………..Patrick Cullen
Michael (the boots)…………………………………..Andy Moggridge
John Hegarty…………………………………………John Gauthier
William Slattery………………………………………Elie Dib
Tom Mooney………… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Paul Washer