Brigit ●●●○○

Bailegangaire ●●●●●

“And sure a tear isn’t such a bad thing, Mary, and haven’t we everything we need here, the two of us?” asks Mommo, in Druid’s haunting production of Tom Murphy’s Bailegangaire, which opened at the Dublin Theatre Festival alongside its newly-written prequel, Brigit. The line, delivered by Marie Mullen as the bedraggled, yet captivating Mommo, in the closing scenes of the play speaks to that much-sought after concept in the theatre world — closure. Bailegangaire — which sees Mommo recounting from her ostensible deathbed, the tale of how the town of Bailegangaire came to be called as such — is almost psychotherapeutic in its quest for an answer, or ending.

Bailegangaire is Murphy through-and-through. It is a devastatingly dark story about a grandmother in the throes of senility and dementia, surrounded by her two grandchildren — the worn-out Mary and the purportedly self-serving Dolly. Brigit, however, is something entirely different and is set thirty years before Bailegangaire. In her introduction to the performance, Garry Hynes, creative director of Druid and director of both plays says that Brigit “could only have been written by Tom now” and indeed as you watch the first play, it certainly doesn’t feel like anything Murphy has ever penned before.

Brigit, which is performed immediately before Bailegangaire is a one-act play that focuses on a single event in the life of Mommo and her husband Seamus, as he is commissioned by the local nuns to craft a statue of one of “our two top saints”, Saint Brigid (the other being Saint Patrick). Their three orphaned grandchildren, Mary, Dolly and Tom, accompany Mommo and Seamus on stage, and those familiar with Bailegangaire will recognise Brigit as one of the family’s final moments of unity before a devastating tragedy.

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In Brigit, Murphy intersperses the comedic with the morose, not by means of relief, but more as an offering of darkness and light. This works well for Bosco Hogan’s portrayal of Seamus, who can turn from a tortured and oppressed craftsman, struggling, in his eyes, against the town’s most apathetic of institutions — the church — to a jocular granddad in seconds, most often due to the appearance of his beloved and favoured Dolly on stage.

Yet, Brigit, which drew considerably and perhaps unsurprisingly more laughs from the audience than Bailegangaire, struggles to set itself up as a piece of standalone theatre. It may be a prequel, but it exists very much in the shadows of the latter. Brigit works to provide a context for Bailegangaire, but it offers little by way of new material. Murphy does offer moments of insight in Brigit and in one particular instant, Mommo’s furore as she finds out Seamus has been visiting his “striapach” captivates and terrifies you. However, to a large extent, this is all referenced in Bailegangaire, in which Murphy incites the same reaction, but with more quietness, subtlety and intimate terror.

When you return to Mommo’s dimly-lit kitchen for Bailegangaire, the scene is stark and domineering, as Marie Mullen’s Mommo is aged and dishevelled almost beyond recogntition. She looms from her bed telling the story of how the town came to be so misfortunate. It is a tale that she herself can never seem to finish and the plot centres on her grandchildren, particularly Mary, pleading with Mommo to complete her story. In Hynes’ production, Mommo is cast as an enthralling seanchaí (storyteller) figure, which serves to highlight the generational gap between her two grandchildren who now exist in a completely contemporary world of radios, motorcycles and TV remote controls.

Where Brigit merely touches the surface of these women’s lives, with Bailegangaire, Murphy delves deeper into their psyches and the psychological bent of the drama is much more strongly felt. Catherine Walsh plays the long-suffering Mary and seamlessly shifts from delirium and near-venomous scorn for her grandmother to tearful exultations of exhaustion. Likewise, Aisling O’Sullivan’s portrayal of the rambunctious Dolly is enthralling and even if at times her delivery was a little overwrought, she was the one who drew the most laughs in the theatre. When asked by Mary if she knew who the father of her baby was, Dolly replies, “I have my suspicions” and as she revelled in the camp, whodunit mystique of it all, the audience was offered a welcome break from the play’s darker scenes.

Yet it was Druid co-founder, Marie Mullen — who had previously played the role of Mary in the Druid’s 1985 premiere of Bailegangaire — who stole the show as the self-imprisoned Mommo, incapable of escaping her own thoughts or letting anyone in. As she tells her story, Mommo’s extended monologue intercepted only by the bickering or pleading of the granddaughters she scarcely recognises, Bailegangaire approaches the metatheatrical. Even in a venue such as the Olympia, which arguably wasn’t an ideal choice for such a drama, Mullen entices you to lean forward in your seat so as not to miss a syllable and in this way, you almost feel like one of the young, imagined grandchildren she envisions at the foot of her bed.

The success of Bailegangaire is undoubtedly thanks to Hynes’ own intimacy and familiarity with the playwright’s work and Murphy’s own long-standing relationship with Druid, but Mullen’s delivery is what stays with you when you leave the theatre. If in Brigit, Mommo somehow manages to bite her tongue, in Bailegangaire, she is set free and in all her haunting verbosity is both magnificent and terrifying.

 

Brigit and Bailegangaire run at The Olympia Theatre until 5 October as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Tom Murphy and Garry Hynes will participate in a post-show Q&A after 4 October’s performance.