TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2024

Callings
Photo: Kabosh Theatre

"People think they're ready to talk. When it comes down to it, they just need more time."

Dominic Montague's Callings, a Kabosh Theatre production directed by Paula McFetridge, is one of those profoundly affecting works that inspires and intimidates the soul with its emotional weight. So much so that this piece of mine has turned into more of a retrospective than a review – I can only apologise for not putting my thoughts together sooner, but such was the strength and sensitivity of what Montague, McFetridge and their cast have produced here, the task felt rather overwhelming.

Overwhelm is what Callings does, in its acting and aesthetic, right from the opening moments. The likes of ABBA's Super Trouper and The Jam's Going Underground, sunny optimism and the painful truth that followed, respectively, are heard from the auditorium’s speakers before the play even begins. Stuart Marshall's very detailed set is primarily an office simply laden with clutter. Within this office, Chris Robinson's Martin and Michelle Wiggins's Helen volunteer as counsellors during the early days of Cara-Friend, a service set up in the 1970s to support many hidden LGBTQ+ individuals across the north of Ireland.

In this period setting and context lies the foundations for an exemplary exploration of the complications of orientation and identity during a hugely conservative time, and Callings delivers in every way. We find, through Martin and Helen's interactions with a series of callers played by Christopher Grant, Simon Sweeney and Vicky Allen, and further exchanges outside the telephone lines, how valuable the phone calls are in encouraging people to open minds and learn to sense the strength and vulnerability in the human voice, for better or worse.

It's theatre as the art of easing or diving into what I'd call the waters of openness, where one is reminded just how many ways there are to handle and read callings for help, be they over the phone or face-to-face, and what may or may not happen as a result. There's the perception of assistance as hypothetical, which blends in with the fear of excess emotional involvement, but there is also the idea of seemingly banal chit-chat enhancing both bonding and trust. It's a transition, from the dryly instructional to the warmth of a positive personal process – the heart behind the art. All callings are taken, and all ways of handling the callings are received – their outcome merely depends on who is speaking and how quickly one and the other can adapt.

What I saw, and still see now, in Callings, is how far society has come in its communal nature and how far it still has to go. It's astounding, too, in that its effectiveness goes beyond LGBTQ+ issues and into highlighting a persistent and affecting "othering" of people in general, of anyone who didn't fit into what was "supposed" to be the machinery of life. If one wasn't perceived to "fit", then their separation from the "in" crowd, the most popular, wasn't purely one of force or bullying - it was worse. It was casual. It was difference countered with confusion or apathy. It was the norm – that's what made it terrifying. And the callers played by Grant, Sweeney and Allen echo this very instance of othering, as if they are part of a group who ought to be neither distant nor disconnected from the best life experiences yet are made to feel that way. For all the positives to be gained from opening up, the tragic implication that it may well take both time and experience for the pressure of more prominent social circles and circumstances to fall away or cease to matter as much remains. Attempting to "fit in" will never carry that sense of completeness that following the heart can offer, and this is why Cara-Friend and communication lines of its ilk are vital – they are an aid towards trust in the self, conversations with people who will not merely listen but also, if they can't understand, at least seek to understand and relate. And this is where everyone finds their Callings – callings to be made and discovered in pursuit of purpose, livelihood and truth.

Simon Fallaha

Callings recently toured the UK and Ireland, including a run at Belfast's Lyric Theatre from Wednesday October 2 to Sunday October 6 and a performance at Black Mountain Shared Space on Friday November 1. For more information on the play, click here.