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The Wickedness of Oz – an original piece written and performed by Kate Gilmore, and directed by Clare Maguire – was staged in the Project Arts Centre from 25th February to 5th March. Gilmore won Best Supporting Actress at the Irish Times Theatre Awards in 2015 for her work on Breathless, performed at the Smock Alley Theatre, and has appeared in numerous productions, including The Great Gatsby, Assassins and Town is Dead; she also played the role of Kate O’Neill in RTÉ’s Fair City. This one-performer show follows the loveable Debbie McInerny on her hungover commute, her painful workday in a travel agent’s office, and the emotionally draining evening she spends with her parents and Aaron, her boyfriend. Interspliced into her rambling, tell-all monologue are musical numbers adapted from famous musicals, including The Wizard of Oz.
Debbie’s rich, melodious interior life is brilliantly juxtaposed by the banal existence she must act out every day – this is one aspect of the “wickedness of Oz”: Debbie brings the hackneyed torment of her “stagnant” life into sharp relief by her singing of bawdy, raucous musical hits. The “wickedness of Oz” has a double meaning, however, as the spectre of the Australian “Oz” is juxtaposed by Debbie’s frustrated, parochial existence, as she scrolls with envy through her Facebook newsfeed, replete with photos of her emigrated peers.
Gilmore’s performance is totally captivating – tender, dynamic and moving. She is also a talented singer; however, the musical material adds less to the piece than one would wish, and our star is guilty of starting too low on several occasions, making what should seem an effortless burst of song appear a little laboured. Gilmore’s ability as a writer is also plain to see: she ably weaves threads through the text and several of the seemingly incidental jokes she tells in the play’s earlier parts are reworked into a real emotional punch in the play’s closing act. However, this script is in need of editing – the first half, in particular, is bloated and appears directionless – particularly in comparison to the play’s hard-hitting end.
For much of the play, Debbie uses comedy and over-explanation to occlude her emotional turmoil. However, Gilmore’s performance, coupled with the intimate theatre space, communicate perfectly to the audience that anything Debbie refuses to admit to them she also can’t bear admit to herself. Denis Clohessy’s sound design ably carries the extra burden a one-performer show often places on sound.
The Wickedness of Oz is an entertaining, engaging piece of theatre that is fully justified as a worthy showcase for Kate Gilmore’s talent. We hope to see much more of her on screens and on stage in the future, and Gilmore should continue to develop her writing talent, with this play in particular ready to benefit from some streamlining.
