The First Child review: An opera seeks to understand a disturbing tragedy in suburbia
In Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s opera, a shop clerk grows obsessed with a married couple. Photo: Ste Murray
O'Reilly Theatre - Belvedere College, Dublin Theatre Festival
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Shortly into The First Child, Landmark Productions’ new opera in association with Irish National Opera, a flustered man buying clothes for his new-born child seeks the assistance of a shop clerk. “Can I still be using this carrier in the summer?” asks Simon – a mundane question sang by Emmett O’Hanlon, with a stark baritone voice probably more suited for the anguish of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
Such is the achievement of composer Donnacha Dennehy and director-librettist Enda Walsh’s opera trilogy that daily exchanges have been given a towering dimension, as if something otherworldly were lurking beneath the surface. Where previous works in the sequence, through the revved-up unsettling atmosphere of art-horror, have shown ordinary lives that, built on families and careers, plummet deep into depression and violence, The First Child feels like the most searching, as another tragedy disrupts suburbia.
When we see the helpful shop clerk Karen, played by a compellingly ambiguous Sarah Shine, later recount her encounter with Simon as a life-altering event, it seems like a connection veering on obsession. O’Hanlon gives a solid performance as a certain class of upright, chiselled lughead whose confidence has been knocked by a cruel wife (a magnificent Niamh O’Sullivan), who, during the gentlest moments of Dennehy’s composition and the most affectionate lines of Walsh’s libretto, will cease glowering and sing about the transformations of finding a lifelong partner and starting a family: “In the days and years before you meet / Suddenly they’re there”.
Impressively, there are numerous separate elements floating through Walsh’s meticulous production, contained within Jamie Vartan’s endlessly porous set, as they build towards a revelation - an older woman (Joan Sheehy) shifts restlessly in a hospital bed; a young girl (the knockout dancer Caia Leseure) writhes between school-bullies’ taunts; a mysterious soul (Eric Juernas) looks on with anger; and the chilling song of a children’s chorus bears resemblance to universe-curious questions at bedtime. (“Does the night stay?” ask the youngsters).
Karen may keep a distance from traditionally monogamous life, preferring a purgatory of online dating where she stumbles across an arrogant, horrendous date (played by a nicely-judged Dean Power), but she also aches for a more permanent connection. She’s eventually reunited with Simon and his wife, and is spurred towards unimaginable violence when her life is described as a failure.
Towards the conclusion there are a number of stirring discoveries, revealing the painful truth behind Juernas’s strange man (sung in a countertenor voice that, to off-guard ears, is like a beam of light arrived from another dimension) and the desolate lunar views of Jack Phelan’s video design, as an immense tragedy unfolds.
There is no denying the pathos that the opera brings upon an innocent who has lost their life, as Dennehy’s music swells with commiseration. Yet, there is something admirable in its absence of judgement, as if trying to understand a catastrophe too overwhelming to take in. It could be easy to smudge the outlines of Karen’s character into some Grand Guignol monster but Shine remains a crisp, sad picture of desperation, while a woman’s dreadful history with neglect is only ever glimpsed and never fully divulged.
Walsh has recently hinted at taking a break from the stage for a few years, after a stretch of plays that were resistant to easy interpretation while ambitiously combining different art-forms into abstract combinations. By comparison, his opera collaboration with Dennehy stands out as one of the most consistent projects anywhere in recent memory, a vision that has been explorative yet clear. In the quiet final moments of The First Child, when a poetic synthesis of dance, music and design flickers before fading into darkness, not only has a story reached a satisfying close. A chapter in an artist’s career feels complete.
Runs until 9th October.