The Walworth Farce – review

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A father and his two sons share a crumbling flat on London’s Walworth Road. Without any kind of lead-in, the threesome start to perform a play — not for us, but for each other. The play-within-a-play involves a marvellous variety of wigs, Monopoly money, cans of Harp, a pair of cardboard coffins, and, for the two sons, frequent and frantic changes of character and costume. These changes, sometimes seamless and sometimes hilariously clumsy, demonstrate Domhnall and Brian Gleeson’s flawless comic timing. Sean Foley’s exuberant production tells the story of Dinny (Brendan Gleeson), a one-play playwright who forces his sons Blake and Sean to obsessively repeat these performances as a way of rewriting their family history and explaining why they have been living in exile from their native Cork for twenty years.

Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce inhabits a no-man’s-land between farce and tragedy that grows larger and larger as the play goes on. The arrival of a Tesco checkout girl, Hayley (Leona Allen), forcefully disrupts their carefully protected ritual and uncovers the latent tension between the brothers and their father. Hayley’s position as outsider is amplified by her overt racial difference. Dinny forces Hayley into whiteface to play his absent wife, and the play ends with Sean in blackface playing Hayley. The racial issues and images that emerge after Hayley’s appearance address the conflict between the Ireland Dinny and his sons left twenty years ago and its contemporary state. The Walworth Farce, like all postmodern art, runs the risk of seeming distant or detached from humanity, but the actors turn in such human and engaging performances that it avoids falling into this trap.

The Walworth Farce runs at The Olympia until February 8. €20 student day tickets available from 10.30am.

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