●●●○○

Panned is a one-man show that explores the difficulties of living with mental illness and its manifestation in the most ordinary circumstances. Ste Murray has the difficult task of single-handedly voicing a script that leans towards a Modernist stream-of-consciousness narrative, confronting the protagonist’s own speech with his internal monologue, while also playing each of the other characters. The play moves from Seán and his girlfriend getting ready at home, going to a themed party and then out into town, which, inevitably, is his undoing.

The minimalist set foregrounds the text as the piece’s primary focal point. It does, however, have subtle relevancies. A simple dark backdrop and a small wooden platform lifted very slightly above the floor become a prominent reflection, if not even a physical manifestation of the restrictions Seán’s turbulent mental state places on him and his societal interaction and his inability to ground himself in a linear tangible reality. Moreover, the audience’s quiet observation of the fourth wall only broadens the text’s emphasis on the difficulty mental illness poses to what could be ordinary human interactions: Seán is faced with and talking to 30 or so people with no reply. This may even highlight the continual stigma surrounding mental illness and the reluctance to talk about or interact with it. Catríona Daly then plays on the modern split between spectator and “spectated” to highlight the distance rifled between mental illness and society: the discussion is still very one-sided. Smoke also intermittently clouded the audience’s view which too reflected the dense script’s clouding of their understanding.

With text at the foreground of the piece, the effectively 60-minute monologue was a singular, overwhelming stream of multiples characters, characteristics and several battling internal monologues which, at times, became obscured and difficult to follow. With so many different roles being played as well as the conflicting personas in Seán’s head by Murray only, the challenge of characterising them all was huge and in the main excellently done. Unfortunately, I did find myself as an audience member getting lost as to who was talking to whom overall. Latterly this confusion was certainly instrumental in the piece’s descent into a psychologically confused narrative of disparate, unrelated thoughts that plague the protagonist’s conscious and blur the lines between internal and external realities. This guided the audience into his mind and experience: like him, all we can hear are numerous, internal, berating voices interspersed with anonymous external injections. However, parts of the text were irritatingly inconclusive. There were several recurring tropes or fragments of preceding storylines (beyond that onstage) that brought a subtle structure to the erratic nature of the Seán’s competing voices. Almost all of these are threaded into the story to augment and contextualise his situation and relationships. There were continual references to going to Tesco or not going to Tesco or something – which were seemingly overlooked as requiring clarification and became a meaningless, confusing element of a storyline that seemed out of place given all its counterparts were cleared and integrated. Moreover, another of these fragmented injections was Seán’s repeated concern over his costume (as Peter Pan) particularly his leggings. However, given how many jokes revolved around his character wearing leggings, the obvious fact that he was not wearing leggings at all but a pair of only slightly awkwardly fitting trousers really undermined the delivery of all of these jokes and comments concerning them. This misconnect between text and costume did unfortunately detract from the piece’s cohesion and was inconsistent and subversive.

In conclusion, the play was interesting and well-executed. It dealt very explicitly with struggles of mental illness both for those who battle it and those around them. It also touched on Ireland’s current job crisis, and issues of toxic masculinity and lad-culture. It was well-written with interesting linguistic episodes that reflected slam-poetry to writing a stream of consciousness, characterised by strokes of powerful imagery. Murray did well to manoeuvre such a challenging script and left the audience reflecting on its themes.

Panned ran at Project Arts Centre, Dublin from 12-17 November 2018.