Jilly Morgan’s Birthday Party: The sad lives of the obsessed
Over four decades, a man struggles to move on with his life, in Liam McCarthy's sly play.
Belltable, Limerick
★★★★☆
At what point does a fantasy become harmful? Back in 1887, Anton Chekhov wrestled this question in The Kiss, a short story about an insecure soldier who feels shut out from a world of intimacy and pleasure that his male peers are free to inhabit. Stuck at a woeful party, he momentarily steps away, when, in a dark corridor, a mystery woman kisses him, rocking his world: for several months afterwards, he fantasises about running into her.
Eventually, on a return visit to the house where the party had taken place, the soldier has a revelation about how meaningless his daydreaming is: “How stupid! How stupid!” But what if a man’s fantasy about a woman took root and persisted for decades? Liam McCarthy’s new play for Lime Tree Theatre | Belltable, a reimagining of Chekhov’s story transposed to Limerick City, is set between 1983 and 2024. What does it mean for a man to live with a fantasy for 40 years?
Director Joan Sheehy’s considered production begins in that era of large hair-dos and sideburns. Jack, a bank teller around 30-years-old, played by Patrick Ryan, is seen wearing a Blondie t-shirt while dancing to 99 Luftballoons at a house party. Smash-cut to the morning afterwards, and he seems to be floating: “My life began last night,” he says.