Somnium: Song of retribution gets lost in transmission
Disparate elements resist fusion in Brú Theatre’s telling of the Philomena myth.
Bank of Ireland Theatre, University of Galway - Galway International Arts Festival
★★☆☆☆
“A tale as old as time,” says an elegiac narrator, near the beginning of Brú Theatre’s new play Somnium. Looking onto a silent woman’s bedroom, represented by layers of transparent scrims, it seems the edges of reality have become hazily blurred – brought on either by sleep-depriving insomnia, or entry into someone’s unconscious mind (the play’s title means “dream” in Latin), or even, in director James Riordan’s ambitious production, the porous boundaries between long centuries where trauma is a grim constant. “We’ve met this woman before. Not this exact woman but many like her,” says the narrator, with solemnity.