Review: WHAT THE ANIMALS SAY, Finborough Theatre

It starts in the claustrophobic, liminal space of a ferry terminal, and both parties don’t really want to be there. Jimmy is a struggling actor on the cusp of a big break auditioning for Mel Gibson’s new film (which may or may not be IRA propaganda); Eddie is a footballer playing for Celtic in Glasgow, despite being a Protestant and sporting a Rangers tattoo. Both are returning to Belfast from Scotland, and have thorny relationships with Protestantism and the Unionist cause back home.

David Ireland’s debut play, which premiered in 2009, shares much of its DNA with his later work: there is the competitive masculinity of 2024’s The Fifth Step, and the same sense of Irish identity warped under oppression as 2016’s Cyprus Avenue. While waiting for their ferry home, Jimmy (Matthew Blaney) and Eddie (Robbie Martin) figure out that they know each other from school, and proceed to needle at, provoke and reminisce with one another, all with a dry, sardonic, distinctly Northern Irish brand of humour.

It does all feel very much like a debut play. Ireland had the inkling of a good idea, but the intriguing throwaway lines that might develop these characters beyond caricature – Jimmy’s apparent history of militancy as an “Orange bastard”, or Eddie’s violent anti-Black racism – never get teased out as much as they should. As with many plays dealing with characters who share history offstage, it also doesn’t spend quite enough time establishing who these men were in the past, in their school days at the height of the Troubles.

But the play’s strength is still in its central dynamic, of two very different men who each nonetheless deal with the spectre of sectarian violence by avoiding it. Blaney plays Jimmy as an aloof, overcoat-clad intellectual cripped by insecurity, more content with sputtering platitudes (“I abhor racism”) than practical politics. Martin is more one-note in his portrayal of Eddie, all barked oneliners and casual homophobic slurs; The script, however, hints at a man deeply isolated from his family, all because of a conflict with which his machismo refuses to allow him to meaningfully engage.

Ireland attempts an ambitious coup de théâtre in the third act: the action jumps a few months forward in time to a vastly different setting, disorienting the audience and reversing the fortunes of the two protagonists. Alex Marker’s revolving set design works hard in the Finborough’s compact black box space to let the confines of the ferry terminal give way to a more uninhibited environment back on Northern Irish soil. Jimmy’s career has begun to unravel at this point, and his increasingly desperate quoting of Shakespeare is another fine showcase for Blaney’s acting.

The eventual violent conclusion ends up being more about a petty, unlikely professional rivalry than a nuanced political conflict, demonstrating the limits of the young David Ireland’s commentary on his home country. Still, this is an immensely watchable two-hander, buoyed by Ireland’s ear for pacey dialogue, which more than papers over the cracks in its plot.

What The Animals Say plays at the Finborough Theatre until 24 October

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