Bedbound – 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin

Writer: Enda Walsh

Director: Marc Atkinson Borrull

Following on from their successful run in Galway, Landmark Productions, in collaboration with Galway International Arts Festival, brings Enda Walsh’s ‘Bedbound’ to Dublin’s 3Olympia.

This iteration is not only a revival of the play which debuted at Dublin’s Theatre Festival in 2000 but, after 40 years, is also a welcome rekindling of Colm Meaney’s metiér on the Irish stage. An added layer of interest, and reminiscent of Brendan Gleeson’s turn with his sons, Domhnall and Brian in Walsh’s ‘The Walworth Farce’, is that Meaney’s daughter, Brenda, joins him for this two-hander.

‘Bedbound’ speaks of the desperate situation a failed furniture magnate and his daughter find themselves in. She has been confined to her grimy bed for ten long years having contracted polio after falling into a cesspit as a child. She grieves terribly for the kind and loving “Mam” she “watched die”, recalling her “calm face” and “the soft music of her voice”. These scenes are particularly poignant given Brenda Meaney’s mother, the actress Bairbre Dowling, sadly passed away in 2016 following a short illness.

The flights of romantic fancy Maxie’s talkative daughter takes to escape the horrors of her hopeless situation are nothing to his verbosity in recounting the rise and fall of his career as the “Michael Collins of the furniture world”; from store-room assistant in Robson’s Furniture Emporium in Cork through to shop owner thrice over in Dublin. And finally, an ignominious retreat back to his squalid lair in the rebel city. Maxie’s occupation will most likely have been inspired by Walsh’s own father’s job as manager of a furniture shop.

With a storyline evocative of the 1972 episode of Steptoe and Son’s ‘Divided We Stand’ in which Harold partitions his Father off in one half of their house, Maxie stands accused of, bizarrely, imprisoning his wife and child in an ever shrinking room of plasterboard (“keep at the walls – thumpa thumpa”). And akin to some who went before and others who came after, there is a sinister mist surrounding the question of how Maxie’s wife met her end.

Maxie Darcy is a nasty piece of work. He is cruel, scheming, violent and quite possibly, murderous. He is also coarse, profane and crude. After one particularly lewd onslaught, a collective gasp can be heard throughout the audience. A few theatre-goers leave. Noisily. Enda Walsh must have really wanted to shake up the established order in 2000.

This play is something of a brain-twister. Is Maxie’s daughter living in reality or is she a ghostly manifestation destined to haunt him forever with the tortuous noise of her incessant chatter? Is the shared bed an inference of impropriety or is this just for dramatic expediency? Did Maxie build physical walls and were they truly closing in or are these metaphors for the psychological and financial effects of his collapsing business and the serious illness of his daughter? Did Maxie actually commit murder on several occasions or is he simply delusional? And if he is guilty of homicide then why isn’t he in prison? But, perhaps, this is Maxie’s prison or asylum cell, in more ways than one.

Director Marc Atkinson Borrull and the production team which includes Sinead Diskin (Sound), Sinead McKenna (Lighting), Jamie Vartan (Set Design) and Sue Mythen (Movement Director) have recreated Walsh’s ‘Bedbound’ commendably and treated us to a slick and professional show. The skillful performances given by both Colm and Brenda Meaney were a joy to behold.

Runs Until 12th August 2023.