Examiner Newspaper

Review by Anne Lucey

Four stars awarded

A PLAY'S the thing to stir the conscience - and the laughter - of a sea-side town, it seems. The device of a play within a play by Lennox Robinson's Drama at Inish is, of course, pure Hamlet, creating mayhem among the play's internal audience who see too much of themselves on the fictional stage.

But the Beehive Theatre production of this 1930's farce takes the device one step further, to the hilarity of the audience who have been packing the productions. In Dingle there is, it seems, "a play without the play".

Many in the audience were well aware of the politician among them who, much like the TD character of stage, has not always agreed with the government party. There were other similarites with Dingle too: the sea-side setting; the complaints about the weather; and the clever and ultimately funny handling of the subject of suicide, which is as common in West Kerry as elsewhere now.

When a baby in the audience cried at the arrival of an empty cradle on stage the confusion was complete.

Fed up with all the introspection prompted by the works of Chekhov and Ibsen, the Inish people banish the repertoire company and turn instead to the circus. The result is that the least complicated character of all, Annie Twohig, who eschews dark drama to sit at home reading comics and dress catalogues, emerges as the most sensible. Full marks to Pauline McCarthy, in her debut role, for carrying the character so well. Let's hope Beehive get a residency in the proposed new boatyard theatre in Dingle.

Program “Drama at Inish”