WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2024
Bringing It All Back Home
Photo: Gorgeous Photography
Directed by Patsy Montgomery-Hughes, Bright Umbrella's Bringing It All Back Home is an impressively structured collection of theatrical extracts given real weight through the reading of actors Sean Kearns, Abigail McGibbon, Dan Gordon and Caroline Curran. It's the art of clarity, gentleness and liveliness all together, a means of reflecting the fuel, maintenance and calm within different types of connections. If the characters in the plays connect while the actors read the lines, we, the audience, establish a memorable connection with the spoken word – in many ways.
In excerpts from David Ireland's Ulster American, we get an explorative insight into both identities and the pride one takes in them, be it for their enrichment or detriment. We hear words that we either aren't used to hearing, perhaps don't want to hear or simply wouldn't hear anymore. We see misunderstandings of cultures from those who desire connection but are perhaps a little too keen to connect. And we see a hurried, almost thoughtless, glossing over of empathy in the act of justifying points-of-view. Like that brilliant episode of Frasier, "Ham Radio", Ireland's work hints at a scenario where creative ambition from the few threaten to far exceed the contextual necessities for the many, when ideally one would hope for a balance.
Photo: Gorgeous Photography
The leaves taken from the literary richness of Lucy Caldwell's poignant Leaves appear to be the kind which centre around the emotive coping strategies of married parents David and Phyllis in the thick of a familial crisis. That is to say, the leaves which may yet comprise the book that David is trying to write, and the leave of absence Phyllis is contemplating – a holiday? – in the possible hope that a rest will be as good as a refreshment for the couple. But as Phyllis suggests places to go, David is too busy speaking out the origin of every place name she utters – hence we have a pair of monologues more than conversation, hinting at a leave of absence from each other rather than together. It comes across as a means of losing oneself in either work or planning a trip as a response to trauma, and also a repeated longing for the delivery of answers where it may be more beneficial to ask questions. That's the brilliance I see in here in Leaves – even when one's purpose seems to be fulfilled by finding the answer they've been searching for, what comes next? What once seemed a certain solution can be tempered by either an alternative view or the exhaustion that comes from continuous rumination in pursuit of the same result.
Perhaps the most heartfelt and earnest segments from the three plays on show are from Caitlin Magnall-Kearns' Orangefield, which traces the complicated love life of a hopeless romantic with genuine thought and endearing drive. When one is approaching and entering their early twenties, their definition of "love" can be very naïve but also equally exhilarating, and it is through this prism that Magnall-Kearns reaches deeply for sensitive truths while not side-tracking the viewer from more light-heartedly pleasing elements. It's a little like Channel 4's Teachers in that sense, a case of hard-hitting realities being intricately woven into the wave of fun one rides when being reminded about the powerful human connections that can be cemented and enriched in the smallest of communities.
In one evening, and one forty-five minute spell of reading, we've been presented with a strong and varied collection and collective of theatricality, put together in such a way that one is definitely left wanting more – a sure sign of the quality of the both the material and the actors.
Simon Fallaha
Bringing It All Back Home recently ran at Belfast's Sanctuary Theatre, from Tuesday August 13 to Saturday August 17. For more information on the reading, click here.