Writer: Martin McNamara
Director: Su Gilroy
The Omnibus Theatre turns out to be the perfect setting for Martin McNamara’s play as it is staged in the old bar where, fortunately, the old counter was kept. The audience is seated at a mishmash of old bar tables and chairs with some bar mats providing the QR code for the programme while others match the beer available on tap, making an immersive feeling for the audience to hear ageing barmaid Rita McGrinder’s reflections on her life, partners, lovers, acquaintances and the punters in this rural borders Irish bar. Set in 2010, there is a mandatory picture of the Pope on the wall.
What the audience is here to hear is the traumatic and darkly comedic tale of vengeful anger at the abuse to which Irish women have been subjected by men. English men, the boorish, boring or angry drunken men and the violent actions of men; the terror inflicted on citizens by the gangsters, drug dealers and terrorist freedom fighters but importantly, as at this time being widely exposed, the horrors enacted by the priests who have been enabled by excessively cruel nuns. It is sadly now an all too familiar tale to hear and bear.
McGrinder is played superbly by Mary O’Sullivan, so well in fact that it is hard to register that this is not actually O’Sullivan’s tale, but that of the playwright, journalist and BBC contributor Martin McNamara. O’Sullivan ensures a constantly tense and menacing atmosphere throughout the 60 minutes, looking straight and unnervingly into different audience members’ eyes as she flashes back to distant memories as each traumatic story slowly reveals itself.
Titters come from the audience, but laugh-out-loud belly aches there are none, as brilliant writing means that a humorous recollection will turn deathly dark without a blink of O’Sullivan’s eye. A laugh turns into a grimace.
It is the details of these traumatic stories that stick with you in the play as they do in real life, the recollections of the smells of the men, the cigarette-stained fingers of the abuser, the filth, the power, coercion, control and derision of the abused and over the community by those in authority. This is exemplified by Rita’s mother being made to hand wash weeks’ worth of grime and stench from the priest’s socks whilst her father watches on as the priest inappropriately fondles his child, too intimidated to interject.
The hour passes in the blink of O’Sullivan’s eye, certainly, because it is a beautifully observed and well- acted play of a woman’s life growing up and remaining in Ireland, rather than escaping to the ironically wistful safety of North America, but also as it has the potential to be a significantly longer play. This is a rich source where more could be made of the famed ability of the Irish for embellished storytelling, including the craic, to make the darkness of these stories stand out. In all though, this is an hour well spent.
Runs until 16 September 2023
