Heaven – Southwark Playhouse Borough, London

Writer: Eugene O’Brien

Director: Jim Culleton

A wedding in a rural Irish town is the setting for Eugene O’Brien’s Heaven, a play that takes a married couple and has them each examine and question the course of their life.

Mairead (Janet Moran) returns to her hometown for her sister’s wedding and finds herself reunited with an old flame. The resultant flirtation distracts her from a marriage that has turned into a sexless but loving friendship and a long-standing beef with a daughter who is as hot-headed as her mother.

By contrast, Andrew Bennett’s Mal has plenty of passion but it is not focused on Mairead’s direction. Years of repressed homosexual desire have combined with Catholic guilt to form a longstanding erotic dream about Jesus, and matters aren’t helped when a wedding attendee happens to look like the Christ of Mal’s dream.

These two characters’ alternating monologues provide insights into their own and each other’s lives and desires. By turns hilarious, raw and raucous, O’Brien provides distinct storytelling styles for his two actors, further informing two rich, well-rounded portrayals. Through them, we also discover a rich array of characters from both sides of the wedding party who, although only described to us, are created so vividly that they may also be on Zia Bergin-Holly’s simple, versatile set with Mairead and Mal.

Moran and Bennett’s monologues would, if shorn of the other’s, be strong enough to stand up as a play in their own right. Mairead’s description of the town she left behind – from the effect the out-of-town supermarkets have had on the stores in the centre, some of which have been shuttered for twenty years, to the familiar faces who stayed, at once gives an impression of someone who both worked hard to get out and yet has fallen into a similar rut today.

Mal’s story is more introspective and personal, matching his reserved character and providing more contrast with Mairead’s outgoing, rambunctious air. Bennett brings a sense of sadness to a man who’s always struggled with his sexuality, describing with delicacy a decades-old evening with a rent boy prior to his marriage with profound delicacy. When Bennett brings his character back to the present, he portrays a man who finally seems ready to embrace his true self.

The parallels between the couple’s stories and each’s attempts to work out where they are headed next are presented with deceptive simplicity, always obvious but never forced. With expertly played comedic and tragic notes, Heaven creates a world that is both familiar and eye-opening, contemplative and optimistic. O’Brien conjures up a turbulent world in which we root for two very different people and their changing life goals. With its depiction of a rural town that has not been as touched by progress as Ireland’s bigger cities, it is as much a story about a country at a crossroads as it is about a family at the same. It is a masterful piece of storytelling.

Continues until 22 February 2025