Medicine review: Domhnall Gleeson struggles to remain at the emotional centre of this random play
A hospital patient tries to tell the story of his life in Enda Walsh’s new play. Photo: Jess Shurte
Black Box Theatre, Galway International Arts Festival
★ ★
Somewhere inside the mysterious hospital of Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival’s new play, a large room is found trashed with the debris of a staff party. This is where the patient John Kane first appears, underneath a banner saying “Congratulations,” among a foliage of confetti and balloons, and wandering past a drum kit. Unable to resist the temptation, he taps its cymbal and makes it shimmer lightly.
From a staging by a less adventurous director than Enda Walsh, you would think nothing of it. Indeed, this is a signal towards another departure. Can the thrilling spontaneity of jazz improvisation help tell a story? If the accomplishment of that genre is to weave maverick sequences into satisfying harmony, there’s a fine line separating it from its opposites: randomness, incoherence, confusion, anti-climax.
Achingly lonesome, and committed to the institution an eternity ago by his parents, John beams the gentle, hopeful smile of Domhnall Gleeson. As he struggles to be heard above the interruptions of an omnipresent interviewer, while his two drama-therapists arrive in over-the-top costumes between acting gigs, there is a sense that he is not in the best care.
A dedicated writer, John has carefully put the story of his own life on paper, as if some role-playing might assist in his treatment. Instead, any faithful reading gets derailed within Walsh’s mad vision of actor’s lives as insecure, low bar, abusive: a profession more absurd that absurdist.
Wearing merchandise from a blockbuster musical and guzzling Lucozade, Clare Barrett’s intense professional will preach the world-changing power of artists and then respond to a direct question in the form of an irrelevant improvisation, performing a bizarre story involving a lobster and a centaur. Without method to its madness, it can seem erratic.
While Walsh’s script holds familiar echoes (the play-within-a-play of his own The Walworth Farce) and obvious inheritances (the pre-recorded contemplations of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp), the overall effect seems less systematic. Nothing much explains the lengthy song-and-dances, such as when Barrett mouths a dignified ballad against an oblivion of moody electronic music and a laser lightshow, other than Walsh’s prior urge to act on impulse; his 2016 play Arlington contained an abstracted second act that was a contemporary dance.
A similarly aesthetic choice, to inject a familiar storytelling mode with a stranger form, is found in Medicine. The drama-therapists are joined by a non-plussed percussionist (Seán Carpio), whose soft brushes and loud crashes seem here to beat in rhythm with John’s story as it’s gently nudged in its telling or sent spiralling into revelation but, during crucial moments, they bang in such competition that Gleeson’s delivery becomes more about volume than detail.
Such decisions are difficult to fathom as they work to remove John from the emotional centre of the play rather than secure him there. That’s strange because the production seems to be aiming for compassion above all else. The other drama-therapist, played with heart by Aoife Duffin, tries to lean into aspects of John’s story he’d rather revisit, bringing back lost friends, reintroducing some closeness into his life.
A long-awaited respite to hear some soul-bearing poetry lands just as shakily as the cryptic clues indicating that that all of this may be occurring within John’s head. A more definite revelation is Barrett’s knockout performance which, funny and unsettling, belongs as much to dark comedy as to psychological thriller, owing equally to John B. Keane as to Kathy Bates in Misery. It’s killer.
Runs in-person until 18th September, with On Demand streaming available until 26th September.
Hello friends.
If you want to hear more about how Domhnall Gleeson came to be in Medicine, I interviewed him for the Irish Times (“Domhnall Gleeson: ‘I live in Dublin because it’s home”).
With Dublin Fringe Festival around the corner, I chatted with director Ruth McGowan in the same newspaper (“Can Dublin Fringe Festival lead the reopening of the city?”).
Also, during the Dublin festival season I’m thinking of publishing my criticism in subscriber posts only, so take a second now to subscribe and don’t miss the coverage of Dublin Fringe Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival.
- Chris