Polished, detailed and moving account of Friel’s best-known work.

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Wednesday, 25 July 2007

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Polished, detailed and moving account of Friel’s best-known work.
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Finnerty and Ó Meallaigh are admirably suited to the roles. Both give intelligent and sensitive portrayals of the inhibited Gar. With admirable projection and a fascinating synchronicity of movement, theirs is a double-act of humour, control and pathos. It is at the conclusion of the first half, when Gar confronts ex-beau, Katie (played by a convincingly troubled Seona Tully), that Finnerty gives the production its finest moment: an extremely disciplined and moving outburst of frustration and despair at everything about Ballybeg that flummoxes him.

Andrew Flynn’s control of the action is as efficient and as exact as ever; the appearance of Gar Private startlingly dramatic and Flynn’s attention to the overarching dynamic is measured and appropriately musical. Designer Owen MacCarthaigh’s two-storey set has a permanence, awareness of period and practicality that would put some modern houses to shame, and a level of detail where even the Sacred Heart of Jesus, symbolically cut in half, is undersigned: ‘S.B. O’Donnell’.

Despite the copious application of wrinkles, teeth and talc to the young actors by the hard-working makeup artist Val Sherlock, and despite their most determined efforts to modulate their voices and posture, their elderly characters still betray dulcet tones and aspects of youth. However, though also occasionally indistinct, their work and that of other actors manages to highlight the stark contrast between those in authority and the aspiring but despairing youth of Ballybeg.

With a strong supporting cast including Ciara Delaney, Patricia Bohan, and Andrew Carney, GYT give a polished, detailed and ultimately moving account of Friel’s best-known work. Their choice of this conventional but difficult play is in stark contrast to their more modern presentation, ‘Autobahn’, and it rounds off a generous and competent artistic contribution to the 2007 Galway Arts Festival.

‘Philadelphia Here I Come’ and ‘Autobahn’ run until Saturday at the Nuns Island Studio. Tickets from the Galway Arts Festival box office.

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