[NEohioPAL] Review of "The Walworth Farce" at Dobama Theatre

[Bob Abelman]

'The Walworth Farce' a filling concoction at Dobama

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald 9/17/10

 

Family histories with their heirloom stories are often the result of a game of relational telephone, where ancestral lore and legend are sentimentally retold and revised by one generation after another. Facts get obliterated.  Feats become exaggerated.  What could have been or should have been innocently, over time, becomes what was.  

 

What happens to a family when its history is purposefully rewritten to the point of reinvention?  How quickly can one erase a past?  What kind of future can there be for the next generation when all that they know about themselves is grounded in fabrication?  

 

These are the questions addressed by playwright Enda Walsh in his absurd and disturbingly dark comedy The Walworth Farce, on stage at Cleveland Height's Dobama Theatre.

 

Walsh's play centers around one family and is set in contemporary times, but the tale he is telling applies to any and all expatriates who reinvent themselves to gain acceptance in a new world.  There are severe, regrettable and lasting consequences, he informs us, when we forget what we are and where we come from.

 

As is his tendency as an Irish writer, Walsh wraps his social commentary in innovative and risky theatrics that, like a pint of Guinness stout, is a rich, robust and satisfying mouthful.  And, as can happen with said pint, the fast and furious The Walworth Farce leaves the audience's collective head spinning.  

 

In The Walworth Farce, we are introduced to Dinny, a Cork man who fled Ireland for England with his two young sons under strange circumstances.  Now grown men, Sean and Blake share a crowded, dilapidated flat with their father, which they never leave and where, at their father's insistence, they compulsively and repeatedly retell Dinny's distorted and broadly stylized take on the family history.

 

Thanks to Walsh's clever employment of language, director Marc Moritz's astute understanding of the material, set designer Ron Newell's conducive environment and tremendous performances by the actors, this piece of storytelling about storytelling is very intriguing.  Each telling of the family lore sheds light and perspective on the mystery about why Dinny left Ireland.  Each tedious retelling of the story (yes, the dramatic repetition is occasionally tedious) brings us closer to the inevitable, catastrophic moment when the big lie is confronted by the awful truth.

 

"This story we play is everything," says the physically intimidating and emotionally damaged Blake, who is fully vested in his father's pathology and is called upon to assume all the female roles in the family tree.  By play's end, we believe him.  He is played brilliantly and with unceasing intensity by Daniel McElhaney.

 

"What are we without our stories," asks the perverse Dinny, portrayed by a daring and talented Bob Goddard.  "Not much" we respond as all hell breaks loose.

 

Andrew Cruse, who appeared in Dobama's production of Humble Boy last May, is once again superb. His portrayal of Sean is wonderfully textured.  He effectively communicates Sean's social retardation while simultaneously showing us a small spark of self-realization.  While an avid participant in his father's bizarre and frenetic charade, there is a glimmer of hope that he can run from his reclusion when an unexpected visitor comes to the apartment.  That momentary disruption in the family's cycle of insanity may be his salvation.

 

Carly Germany plays Hayley, a British supermarket clerk who arrives with the bag of groceries that Sean accidently left behind during a rare excursion into the outside world.  Germany channels the sheer horror of every female character in cinematic psychological thrillers that has ever walked into the wrong place at the wrong time.  Her fear is full-bodied and absolutely convincing.

 

Director Moritz has filtered out much of the over-the-top funny business that other productions of this comedy have embraced, going more for the humorously peculiar.  This is a daring choice, for an audience is never more vulnerable and pliable then when in mid-laugh.

 

Still, the playwright's goal is achieved.  The Walworth Farce is a deranged family portrait that will leave audiences wondering just how much of their own self-perception is the stuff of heirloom stories.  

 

The Walworth Farce continues through October 3 at the Dobama Theatre, 2340 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights.  For tickets, which range from $10 to $25, call 216-932-3396 or visit www.dobama.org.

 
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