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People are like cows — some are tough, while others simply can’t handle the pressure — or so agree Barney and Thomas in Andrew Flynn’s adaptation of the Stuart Carolan play Defender of the Faith, performed by Decadent Theatre Company at Project Arts Centre.
Set in 1986 Armagh, Defender of the Faith follows what’s left of a family in the midst of the fighting between the British forces and the IRA, pressures rising all the while. With a mother in a home and a brother who met with “an accident” one year previously, they’re left with three generations of men who all see the world and each other in extremely different lights. Donny (David Martin), a boy of about twelve, is full of excitement and wonder, and can’t wait to take the world head-on; his significantly older brother Thomas (Michael Ford-Fitzgerald) is sick of the world, ploughing through it with bored disgust; their father Joe (Peter Gowan), on the other hand, is as scared of this world as he is accustomed to its harsh realities; then there’s the helping hand Barney (Lalor Roddy) — ever preoccupied with the death of cows and men alike, and rightly so concerning the latter.
It takes, however, the arrival of the “soft handed, cold hearted” J.J. (chillingly portrayed by Diarmuid de Faoite) from Belfast to set this family’s further demise into action. With the weight of a police informer in the midst, suspicions, tempers, and family issues rise to sad and violent pinnacles. What enfolds is the tale of a family collapsing in upon itself, and what is left at the end is a picture both touching and pathetically bleak.
The relatively small cast (including an appearance by Anthony Brophy) work seamlessly together, making the two hours you’re watching them feel much more like reality than fiction. A thorough and seldom-reached accomplishment, the show is if anything too realistic, and has you leaving the theatre slightly on edge and avoiding any less-than-jovial fellow pedestrians.
With working props that leave stains on the concrete tiles, an expert use of lighting and sound (by Carl Kennedy), and even choreographed scene changes, Owen MacCarthaigh’s set design was as compelling and brutal as the plot. The use of the props in particular — the removal of a sentenced-man’s dirty shoes and damp socks, the black plastic bag crumbled around his head — drew heart-thudding attention to the sometimes sickening reality of the paramilitary activity. Petra Bhreatnach’s costume design was likewise perfectly if not painfully commonplace, with its rips, stains and mud-splattered everything.
Yet somehow, through all the tragedy, the show manages to be seriously funny. The (albeit dark) humour throughout serves as relief from such an intense subject, and has the audience laughing aloud just as often as gasping in horror. But then, life is like that — a human mixture of tragedy and comedy — and therefore it was what makes this play stay with you well after you’ve left the theatre; these are people’s lives we’re watching, and human life is a fragile, funny thing.
Defender of the Faith runs at Project Arts Centre until November 29.
