If We Got Some More Cocaine, I Could Show You How I Love You has a deceptively simple premise: two young men robbing a house in County Clare must hide together on the roof to wait out the Gardaí. The night that ensues is an undulation of highs and lows that brings together love, danger, and questions of identity.

 

The slanted roof Mikey and Casey must navigate visually calls forth the themes this play grapples with: coping with a sense of potential danger; living at the edge of a precipice; balancing conflicting notions of selfhood. As the night progresses, If We Got Some More Cocaine explores the frustration of lose-lose scenarios and the paradoxes faced by those who are multiply oppressed along sexuality, race, and class lines, but also the complications wrought on all by love in its many variations.

 

Writer and activist Audre Lorde wrote: “My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition.” This battle for the integration of selfhood is at the heart of If We Got Some More Cocaine. Mikey and Casey, an interracial gay couple, are externally torn by expectations which attempt to divide and disintegrate their identities. They adopt different strategies for coping with the decisions they must make. Although often not understanding each other’s approach, their actions are underscored by the desperate, fervent love that emerges in the face of opposition.

 

The near-absence of LGBT+ stories in Irish theatre is unrepresentative of Irish society. Companies, playwrights, directors, and theatres must be called upon to act with more attention towards the diverse experiences of our population and follow the path of plays like If We Got Some More Cocaine. Even in 2018, it is vital not to underestimate the importance of two men kissing on stage in a manner that is not caricature-ish or for comic relief, but rather as an expression of love.

 

If We Got Some More Cocaine is a piercing performance that voices an evocative story, the likes of which has previously remained unarticulated. We must hope that it will set a precedence for theatre to come.

●●●●●

If We Got Some More Cocaine, I Could Show You How I Love You is showing at the Project Arts Centre from January 16th to February 3rd.