Mairead (played demonstrably by Lucy Miller) and Mal (played sensitively by Noel Hodda) are married. This weekend they return to their home country in Ireland for a wedding. They’ve been together some twenty years and have a young adult daughter, Siobhan. Mairead is almost tormented by her love-hate relationship with Siobhan and has survived in her deep friendship with her husband.
They are here in a B&B, ready to celebrate and getaway and revisit the past all at once. Their stories are a reliving of moments across the weekend and each reveals in solo explorations of who they think they are and what might have been.
We begin with Mairead whose compassion for others it seems is a tortured denial of why she reverts to the fight and feisty fierce middle age chomping at her heels. She is a woman seeking desire like the long lost first love she abandoned before Mal came along as the easy answer. Mal we meet then in the midst of his own crisis of identity wracked by forbidden fantasy he has spent his whole life denying, until this weekend. Mairead reignites a past romance and Mal meets his young man so much like the vision in his dreams he might succumb.
They live across times and spaces and we are spellbound in their tales. We see her world of a crumbling past and a hard youth now wrestling with her longing for more. He is here and not here as he appears to go along with everyone else and never truly for himself. We can easily imagine them together and yet they never are.
Kate Gaul has invited these two master actors to uncover powerful truths in front of us in the intimate space of the Qtopia theatre. A perfect venue for this intimate narrative. We felt for them both and this care and compassion from an audience is too often a hard ask. I went with them easily. Go along and see if they find their true selves. The play by Eugene O’Brien is recent and feels very now.
*This reviewer attended the final preview performance on Thursday 15th May
Written by: Eugene O’Brien
Directed by: Kate Gaul
Mairead: Lucy Miller
Mal: Noel Hodda
Assistant Director: Romney Hamilton
Lighting Design: Topaz Marlay-Cole
Stage Manager: Caity Cowan
Dialect Coach: Carmen Lysiak
Social Media: Maddie withington
Production Shots: Alex Vaughan Photography
The Loading Dock Qtopia Sydney
14-31 May
