Review: Millennial Malaise in THE PLEASURE GROUND

Jarlath Tivnan isn't the first West-of-Ireland writer to open a play with a funeral (40 odd miles south from his hometown Boyle lies Tuam, the land of Tom Murphy) but The Pleasure Ground is an original not only for the playwright but for Fregoli Theatre Company, who after rigorously producing work for eight years get a shot at the main stage of the Town Hall Theatre.

Young adults are seething, convulsing and vomiting through the church service of an old friend who threw himself into the river that runs under the town playground. The action, kinetically choreographed and sonorously tuned by director Maria Tivnan, is in the strokes of black comedy but points to darker truths under the surface.

It's no surprise that Jarlath Tivnan would be in best control of the material, stormy and comically timed as an angry man resentful of a robbed childhood. Yet, the writing is sparky in the hands of Kate Murray, her character a bitter deli-worker dispirited by small-town life and its lack of opportunity. Taking a generation born in the 1990s, their country crashed in the 2000s, the drama makes a shrewd exploration of millennial malaise.

Sometimes the 1990s context is a bit forced, with references to everything from Italia 90 to Power Rangers (Mighty Morphing) and 9/11. Excess is epitomized in Peter Shine's otherwise humble turn as a farmer, who conjures the glorious night of Riverdance at the Eurovision. Where the set-ups for joke are too commonplace, the development of the plot is too convenient; the intelligible Eilish McCarthy plays a theatre student besieged by local begrudgery but the role is drawn to be instructive.

The first act plays very much in the company's physical and choral style, where the effect can be mainly felt in stylistic surfaces, with comical representations of western characters uneasily classified as authentic or stock types (alá commedia dell'Aran?). It's a strong decision to present the second act in dialogue, bringing the stakes of the drama more into focus, and simply because Tivnan knows what to do with these rich characters once brought together.

While the deprivation of the play-world is not really felt in Joss Clarke's clean and colourful playground set, Matt Burke's lighting and Elena Dova's sound design contribute elegiac elements, and in the final beat are brilliantly ambiguous. Tivnan's play proves nervy as it goes along, setting up some excellently disguised revelations that stress urgency: the importance to communicate our pleasures but also the unspoken catastrophes of our minds.

The Pleasure Ground played at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway from Aug 21-22. For more information see tht.ie.

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