
"So," says my lovely wife, "what's on the schedule for this week?"
"Disappointment," sez I.
So I hold in my hand what appeares to be a fascinating anthology:
Seen and Heard: Six New Plays by Irish Women
. I still expect that it's 5/6ths fascinating, but 1/6th of it is
Women In Arms, by Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy. If I said "a physical piece of storytelling theater, reminiscent of Mary Zimmerman's
Lookingglass work, dealing with the powerful women in
The Ulster Cycle" ... I expect you're getting a picture and it's a picture of something that can't afford mediocrity. It will either be electric, or a crushing bore dragged down by the weight of its own pretension. And while there's a chance the original production was the former, the script is most certainly the latter.
It's just all so terribly
earnest, so terribly "
a celebration of". A celebration of Ireland, a celebration of myth, a celebration of theater, a celebration of
women womyn. And I instinctively react poorly to anything that's "a celebration of" because it's telling instead of showing. I don't get to experience these stories and decide their importance, because Burke-Kennedy is too busy telling me how I should react. While these are interesting stories of titanic mythical women, but it's hard to penetrate the feeling of precious "celebration" enough to actually celebrate them.
Structurally, there's a decent attempt here at a style of storytelling theater, but the focus is off. There are too many times that slip into character-driven dialogue, then hop back into choral narrative just as the going gets good.
Before I call it a post, if you know an actor who can pull off the following stage direction, please give me their contact info:
Nessa begins to wonder if she is a Pig-keeper.
And I'll stop now, before trying to puzzle out the stage direction that requires the cast to assemble in the form of Picasso's
Guernica, because that makes so much ....