WORDS: Heather Keane

Frank McGuinness’s heartbreaking new play is a beautiful, honest, and deeply entertaining story about the reluctant passing on of a generational torch. It is a literary triumph.

Sam Grant (Niall Buggy) is a storyteller. Jane (Barbara Brennan) his wife, tells jokes that are “just meant to be funny”. Their children are all on leave from their normal occupations; Maurice (Marty Rea), once a philosophy lecturer; Rachel (Cathy Belton), a lawyer; and Charlie (Declan Conlon), pro bono caretaker of the elderly Grants. The former two, younger siblings, both prodigal, have been drawn back to their father as he is dragged under by the cold hand of dementia. He spins cruel and fantastical tales around his family members to delay their action and shroud his debilitation.

Sam opens the play in Donegal’s own Hanging Gardens, tucked away in hidden grounds of the Grant’s house. “Fetch me the moon shining on Babylon. Let its gods shower blessings on me.” Such grand lines are wailed in the pouring rain by the geriatric in his pyjamas in the opening scene. This spectacle paints the often humorous proceedings of the play in a prophetic sadness. Though Sam chooses to make light of this episode to his family — and McGuinness grants him a wicked wit that he’ll use to fool us as well — the laughs emitted from the audience often betray a nervousness brought on from this early shock.

Buggy’s performance never allows Sam to be pitied. Facial acting is his strongest talent here; creative inspiration lights up the features, familial disappointments twist them into a rage. His presence as an alpha male emanates from his throne at centre stage and despite constant interruption and interference from his family members, it is rare the focus is taken off him. Rea gives the best performance out of the children, convulsing in shame when Sam torments him with a past better remembered by the sickly father than the silent son; “You, in women’s underwear. You, wanking to your heart’s content.”

Denis Clohessy’s original music that blankets the turbulent landscape in an occasional harp-rendered serenity is a highlight. These moments give the audience a clue to how things might have been when the Hanging Gardens were first planted and Jane and Sam were two oddball newlyweds. That is a real success in the play, a natural sense of this family’s history we gain along the way. You come away knowing the Grants, knowing which one of them you are, knowing this could or may already have happened to you. We can’t help Sam, his family can’t help Sam, one cannot help time’s erosion. McGuinness torments us, dangling the former genius of Sam in front of the audience with a great emphasis on the literary and textual value of the play.

The Hanging Gardens runs at the Abbey Theatre until 9 November