Writer and Director: Garrett Keogh
Music Composition: Hélène Montague and Trevor Knight
HEAD CASE comes to us today compliments of The Gap Arts Festival. Garrett Keogh is himself a Director of this “community and artist-led festival” which “takes place in the hills of North Wexford each year” and “has evolved to include live classical and rock music, poetry and spoken word, movies, spectacle, VR, pageant and dance.”
Keogh is instantly recognisable when he takes the stage to the wonderful, live piano accompaniment of classical musician, Hélène Montague. The Abbey trained actor has been a familiar face across theatre and film, both at home and abroad, for decades.
Performing the one man show which he has also written, Keogh kicks off with an unexpected and timbre-full burst of song. It has the audience smiling from the off. He’s “waiting in the waiting room” among “the masses, the hordes and the multitude” where the “rows of plastic chairs are nailed down.” Marie Tierney’s minimalist set design of a nondescript grey bench, pedestal and voile curtain backdrop draws focus to the actor. Rightly so.
Admitted “..to the A & E. The E dot D. The E and R..” after a bang on the head, our protagonist finds himself at the mercy of the modern Irish health care system. “Big Jim” (Larkin) steers the patient in a wheelchair from his cubicle to “another waiting room” and from there to a back corridor where he encounters some of Dublin’s finest.
An ignominious wretch, “legs a bleedin kimbo”, is a sore sight to behold – “Ah Jaysus, have I been sick all fuckin’ over meself? Ah Jaysus. What are you lookin’ at?” There are drunks who have fallen and those who have been beaten up. One “beelzebub of gluttony” has been to the “chipper” – “behold, the chips and battered sausage, the blessed, blessed battered sausage”. An elderly Lady has a mound of sodden dough attached to the end of her nose but the poultice hasn’t cured her boil. “Bread today, it’s not the same”. “It’s getting on for evening now, teatime even, now, but in here you’d hardly know it. Fluorescent all day lights don’t show it.” “Fresh air has died, it has stupefied.” Our man is hungry, alone and in pain. “Where are you? You said you’d be here and I need you.” The lump on his head is “the size of half an egg. Quail – (the egg) – not duck.” They “were laughing … making ratatouille.” He’d “flicked a bit of carrot (who the fuck puts carrot in a ratatouille?).” “She’s not a violent person” but “there was instant retaliation.” He’s “not violent either” but what of the 8 inch blade and how the blood shot out and hit the ceiling?
Turns out his piano playing wife has been with him throughout. “That’s her now. That’s the one who’s playing. In here, all day, I’ve heard her playing.” But he doesn’t say these things out loud. They’d think he was a ‘head-case’.
And what beautiful music it is too. Compositions by Montague and Trevor Knight expertly convey the full spectrum of Keoghs narrative, from the frenetic pace of his dialogue when frustrated and in pain, to the jollier asides, to his final sorrow and anguish. Conleth White’s lighting design is equally polished. A sudden, dramatic, orange/red spotlight on Keoghs face at one point is particularly effective.
The word that lingers after watching HEAD CASE is talent. This play has been a collaboration between genuinely accomplished creatives and artists. Keogh is not only a proficient actor, singer and orator of spoken word, he is a gifted writer. If there was one area of adversity for the playwright I imagine it was in marrying a commentary on the absence of the provision of adequate care in our healthcare system with the entertainment value necessary to hold an audience. I think Keogh manages to do this very nicely indeed.
Runs Until September 7th 2024.
Reviews Hub Score
Humorous and insightful!
