Tlisted below are three sorts of sorrow, one character explains in Marina Carr’s newest play, which fits on to painting gradations of struggling that appear innumerable. Laced with black comedy within the first half, its grim subject material is initially saved at a distance in Caitríona McLaughlin’s glossy co-production for Landmark Productions and the Abbey theatre.
Looser in construction than Carr’s diversifications of Greek delusion, its setting is the current or current previous, with echoes of fairytales and gothic legends. Once we first meet mysterious adult-children Mac (Anna Healy), Grass (Marie Mullen) and Purley (Nick Dunning), their ritualised celebration video games include strict guidelines and fluorescent costumes, harking back to Alice in Wonderland. Their area is a cavernous basement dominated by two steep staircases, designed by Jamie Vartan to counsel a portal to a different world.
It’s all playfully surreal, till we watch them bully a fourth character, Audrey (Aisling O’Sullivan), who swiftly adjustments from sufferer to their intimidating grasp. Because it emerges that Mac, Grass, Purley and Audrey are ghosts, these ebullient spirits appear far more vivid than the “actual” couple in the home: Maria (Zara Devlin) and David (Patrick Martins), grieving for the dying of their child.
Performed with mordant humour by O’Sullivan, Audrey intervenes within the human world, previous and current. Carr’s script bends time startlingly, depicting the ghosts of youngsters not but born. These are the fortunate ones, escaping the inevitable ache of human life. That is emphasised when the manufacturing strikes nearer to awkward realism, with Maria and David visiting Maria’s embittered dad and mom.
The sudden dying of first one baby, then one other, prompts questions on duty, because the bereaved need to know who, or what, is guilty. On this none-too-credible “actual” world, tragedy topples into melodrama, in overwrought dialogue revealing deeper layers of grief. Simply what number of youngsters have died mysteriously on this household, in cot deaths, via sickness, accident – or maybe a very malign destiny?
Carr is asking why such horrible issues are repeated via three generations, cyclically. But the drawn-out ending and shift in tone away from the compellingly unusual realm of the ghosts dilute the impression of those disturbing questions.
