Fair DealAbbey Theatre, Dublin\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606 <\/p>\n
Liam Doona, set designer of this initially sedate, but ultimately riotous, black farce, can take justifiable pleasure in hearing that the house in which the disagreements play out is, to use a hoary old cliche, \u201ca character in itself\u201d. The yawning interior, every corner scuffed with ancient suffering, contains porcelain dogs, ceremonial plates, a cheap barometer, an unconvincing claret jug and a delightfully vulgar painting of an older lady wielding a (Chekhovian?) golf club.<\/p>\n
For the opening, mid-temperature third of Una McKevitt\u2019s new play for the Peacock<\/a>, the house may indeed be the most compelling character. Conceived partly to ponder contemporary discontents about housing and social responsibility \u2013 the title references a Government<\/a> scheme for long-term residential care \u2013 Fair Deal<\/a> begins by introducing us to members and associates of a troubled Irish family.<\/p>\n Kiera Thornton (Caroline Menton), first encountered carousing with her boyfriend Rio (Jack Weise), is a sensible, if unfulfilled, young woman coping indifferently with an imminent crisis. Her grandmother, the lady in the picture, bequeathed her the crumbling house, and, since the old woman\u2019s death, she has been visiting to take care of an unseen uncle with a terminal genetic complaint. Daragh (Garrett Lombard), her moderately successful actor brother \u2013 \u201csmall parts in, films, big parts in small films\u201d \u2013 calls round with a curry the evening before the sick man, now unaware of his surroundings, is to be moved into care. Kiera is taking that opportunity to sell the house.<\/p>\n We are initially presented with an agreeable enough family comedy that raises polite titters, rather than genuine guffaws. The atmosphere changes considerably when Aisl\u00edn McGuckin, as Kiera\u2019s fearsome mother, Sandra, crashes in the door wielding the \u201cFor Sale\u201d sign as Vlad the Impaler might wield a head on a spike. Somewhere between a Strindbergian ice witch and an escapee from the Jackie Collins universe, Sandra has found success as a celebrity interior designer in Los Angeles. Dressed in stereotypical rich-bitch livery \u2013 everything that\u2019s hard is gold; everything that\u2019s soft is camel-coloured \u2013 she sets to tearing apart her weakish brother and her fatally moral daughter. \u201cI\u2019ve always liked houses, you can impose yourself on them,\u201d she spits. <\/p>\n McGuckin\u2019s delightfully foul performance alerts us to a coming tonal shift, but few will expect the melodramatic swivel that ultimately disrupts the play\u2019s pseudo-realistic progress. This asks quite a bit of the audience. Indeed, both Darragh and Kiera adjust themselves a little too quickly to the new unreality \u2013 as if aliens had arrived and they\u2019d calmly offered them tea. But it proves a risk worth taking. All four cast members, directed with great discipline by Conall Morrison, relish the opportunity to munch through the sort of bloody comic reversals that once powered Joe Orton plays. Lombard does hilarious actorly vanity. Menton just about maintains rationality. Weise returns with a malign twinkle. McGuckin correctly holds nothing back in her creation of a pantomime monster for the ages. <\/p>\n