Culch.ie

Review – ‘The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant’ at the Abbey Theatre

Looking at the promotional shots for Tom Murphy’s The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant, now showing at the Abbey Theatre, you’d be forgiven for that little shudder of timidity you may feel.

One image neatly conveys a number of messages – here is an aging, well dressed and fiercely formidable woman that wouldn’t be out of place staring at you from currency, never mind a photo. There is, to my mind, a complete air of confidence, of snobbery, of little humour and of power exuding from the picture – this woman is in control and wants you to know that.

Her control, of course, is the whole basis of this play. Inspired by the sprawling Russian dramatic novel The Golovylov Family by Shchedrin, one of Russia’s greatest satirists, this “epic family drama, shot through with dark humour… tells the tragic story of a family disintegrating, having lost its moral values.”

The Golovylov Family is widely considered to be one of the great books of Russian literature, presenting a vivid image of an isolated, tragic family moving slowly towards its own demise. Oh they knew how to write misery, those Russians.

Murphy, commissioned by the Abbey Theatre for this work, has taken the basic premise of this story and brought it to Ireland. Well, it may be Ireland. The characters certainly speak with an Irish accent. Murphy himself says it’s set “once upon a time in a provincial rural area”. There’s a big old estate in the countryside (ably effected by the set) where Arina, the main character, our reluctant tyrant rules with an iron fist.

From the description

“Arina is an ambitious woman. As a servant girl she marries into the degenerative family she works for and saves it from extinction. Further, her ruthless energy saves the family from ruin, expanding their estate into an empire. As a matriarch she rules with an iron hand, her avarice insatiable – until she begins to wonder what is it all for? She slackens her hold and loses her power to the hypocrisy and relentless grasping of her chosen son.”

Some woman, that Arina. Not one you’d want to mess with. Played ably by Marie Mullan, she conjures memories of other powerful women – Cate Blanchett’s Elizabeth, Judi Dench’s Victoria in Shakespeare in Love, grand theatre ladies like Dame Bangnall, her character is not one to be messed with. Ferociously continent and cruel, she has calculated everything from the day she walked into the family’s life and made an art of it.

And so we’re set for an epic, exciting drama to unfold. Why then is the play not that good?

It’s a curious one – there is so much here that is good that the whole thing should work, yet somehow, fails epically to. I fell for certain elements of it all and hated others. I actually apologised to Steph for dragging her with me at the end, even though the play had given me plenty to think about.

The set:  seated as we were in the Abbey Friday evening, we had an excellent view of stage and set. Characters were already on stage, preparing, walking, moving, introducing us to a busy setting as they came and went on their business. Around us, people chattered away waiting for the main drama to begin.

It was curiously satisfying, being able to sit and observe the acting and talk through it. It also gave my my first chance to see the set in action, with people interacting with it. It’s impressive – there really is no other word. There’s so much that can be done with it, so many features that display its versatility and grandeur that it becomes, in many senses, as much a character as the people on stage.

The wardrobe too is worth mentioning – contrasting and complementing the dark tones and shifting fortunes of the family – we are never left in doubt of the success or otherwise of characters based on the sumptuous wardrobe.

The lighting: Ben Ormerod, lighting designer for this play, deserves an award. The way lighting is used throughout this play is a masterclass. Whether it be the passage of day into night, the depiction of different characters or moods or the subtle raising of light on one, more dominant character while the submissive remains in shade, the collaborative relationship that must have existed between him and Tom Piper during the set design has paid off – pardon the pun – brilliantly.

As with any play, you need the audience to believe that this stage is the setting, that it can be a big house interior, a ditch by the roadside, an old hut up the mountains all within a few minutes. The lighting plays a huge part in this throughout the play.

The cast: The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant has a fantastic ensemble. Marie Mullen dominates the stage as the unforgiving Arina, though is ably backed by Declan Conlon in a fantastic role as the sinister though publicly pious Peter, Frank McCusker and Darragh Kelly as her sons.

Rory Nolan, last seen as a lead in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, plays Anthony, a minor though important character with an afability that endears the audience to him and his plight immediately.

Mick Lally, last on the Abbey stage in 1993, appears all-too-briefly in a role you’d question for an actor of his ability. There are in fact many great actors with roles that needed expanding – it’s almost as if they just took familiar faces to fill a gap where any face would do. Eva Bartley as Vera is a delight, but doesn’t get to really act until the last scene, by which time it’s too late to even care.

The beautiful Janice Byrne infects the stage with a passion, a playfulness and a vulnerability throughout, as her character Anna becomes the surest sign of the family’s decay. For her first time working at the Abbey, it’s a strong debut that bodes of good things to come.  It is possibly this character that redeems the play from the complicated mire of disruption that it descends into.

What does that mean?

Well, the reason this play doesn’t work is not acting, set, design, wardrobe, lighting or any of the other factors that can let down a piece of drama. It is the passage of the story, the narrative flow and the dialogue where it all comes apart, just not in the way the writer wants.

The very essence of this story is hypocrisy, and what is that other than a deformed version of the truth? That is what Murphy has presented us with – we are prepared to accept the scenarios, the characters and the events he proposes – the truth of the matter though is conspicuosly absent in places. There’s large swatches of authenticity missing – something the play suffers very badly as a result of.

Anna is perhaps the only believable, authentic character in the end, the only one we have any respect for. There’s nothing reluctant about Arina, for example, making her final surrender all that less believable, more contemptuous, harder to accept.

I love stories with a strong beginning, middle and ending. Setting, theme, tone and so on all irrelevant – it’s the flow of the story – whether a leads to b leads to c and the realism of this that matters to me. Murphy wants us to accept that this place is real, that the characters could have existed and that their lives could have followed the path he has laid out for them, through their dialogue and their actions. We can’t, because it wouldn’t happen like that.

Script wise the story is sound. Arina has little but contempt for her three sons, especially the youngest and oldest, Steven and Paul. The middle brother however, Peter, known as the bloodsucker and pervert – commands her fear too. Her suspicion of his ingratiating ways are well founded, her trust in him misplaced and the mere fact she has allowed him to do what he does works well on paper.

On stage however, Murphy has perhaps kept too much to the original Shchedrin story and ignored basic differences between Russian and Irish literature, between contemporary writing and the literature popular in Russia at that time. It doesn’t work. You wouldn’t believe it. There’s far too much overblown dialogue, bearing of the soul, exposition of the flaws, repetition of long, unwileldy and exhaustive speeches – ones that wouldn’t realistically be listened to either in that world or this one.

A psychologist might suggest that Arina has had a mental breakdown and this explains her actions. Perhaps if this were made more obvious rather than left to the assumption, we’d be far more willing to accept that her foresaking of power after so long was realistic, that she could be taken in as easily as she was and have lost the control. While its implied, her actions, and the story, don’t bear it out to the full effect it needs to.

After a hectic start there’s a very telling whisper to herself “Why am I only happy on my own?” that heralds the real start of the story. If Murphy had followed this route rather than complicating with a lot of other unnecessary narrative arcs and events that could easily have been talked about but not shown, the play would have been far stronger.

We are led to believe that her husband Victor leads a life of drink and bawdy – and quite explicit – poetry, that she will accept her son Steven back despite the earlier assertion that she didn’t care to hear about his illness or predicament “I don’t want him near that door. He ought to be shot. I’d do it myself: God or the law wouldn’t have me answer for it”, that everything she has worked for – recited with a passion in scene four – is unimportant to her. I can’t say much more without spoiling the story for those about to see it.

I sat unconvinced through the play, scribbling feverishly in my notebook as each new criticism came to the fore. “What are they laughing at?” I wrote during one of the scenes, where Murphy aims to convince us that everyone’s having a great time. “It’s very disjointed. I’m not sure how everything leads to everything else?” I’ve scribbled down at another point. There were moments I was just waiting for the end to come, the inevitable demise, but the other parts kept on intruding to almost no benefit.

The problem is, ironically, the character of Arina – the story is so reliant on her that when that is deflected, or ignored, it falls flat and hard. The contrast between her and the other characters needs to be explored more, their actions just aren’t interesting or important. The main demands of power, posturing and politics, the drive for reward and revenge deserves to be much more part of the play than they are.

It is perhaps one of the strongest pieces of dialogue, one of the most powerful moments of the play and one that shows Mullen at her best that let me down the most throughout the whole play. From the start we are just the audience, observing, and are happy to do so. However, scene three of act four, something that works very well on paper, is executed so badly that I almost walked out.

Arina, previously aloof, independent and powerful, now crushed beneath the weight of her own failure breaks the entire narrative of the play and addresses the audience directly. It is this disjointment that broke me. Despite how well it was spoken, the fact she did that, making us part of it was just such a bad idea that it made a mockery of everything before and to come.

I’ll go down there and to summon you I’ll send messengers flying, and when they drag you before me I’ll be standing on the top step of that building, the townland assembled round looking up at me, to hear me denounce you!

I can’t recommend The last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant, despite there being so many good elements that should have worked here. It’s lacks subtlety. It lacks a good contemporising of the story, cutting the unwieldy nature of the literature and just getting down to the story. One lady beside me, said, good naturedly though with a certain exasperation “I’d love to see what the Gate would have done with it!” and it is perhaps quite an Abbey dramatic choice to have a play filled with so much declamation.

The ending scene, Arina, alone, talking about herself is Mullen at her very best. Though the director seems to have pitched it just that bit too dramatic, it is her assertions, her delivery, her raw anger, conspicuosuly and unfortunatly absent for far too much of the play that brings the applause at the end. It’s almost worth staying for. Almost.

“There is nobody can or is able to stop me! There is nothing I can’t do!

I was tough? D’you think innocence stands a chance? And, do you, for a woman? Show your feelings and you’ll soon discover what softness can expect of male or any other kind of gallantry.

What something otherwise should she, could she, ought she, so worthwhile, so easily have done with eher life? I’d still like to know about that one too.”

The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant by Tom Murphy continues at the Abbey until Saturday July 11, at 7.30pm Monday to Saturday, with a 2pm Saturday Matinee. Tickets are vailable from €20 and can be ordered from the Abbey website or at 01 87 87 222. By the way, grab the programme if you go. It’s worth it.

Thanks to David at the Abbey for the tickets and the opportunity to review.