SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 2024
Five Year Stand
Matthew Blaney and Sarah Reid in 'Five Year Stand'. Photo: Brunswick Productions
Subversive, rich, funny, lively and beautifully acted, Brunswick Productions' Five Year Stand, co-directed by Ewan McGowan and Beth Strahan and starring Matthew Blaney and Sarah Reid, is a potentially familiar story given a wholly unfamiliar and truly edifying twist – the art of the bond as a relentlessly dark tragicomedy of errors where reality must repeatedly be faced. In a way, its tone is not too far removed from what you might call When Harry Met Sally meets Ruthless People – it is a case of the audience at Belfast's Grand Opera House studio bearing witness to, frequently laughing, and perhaps sometimes feeling uncomfortable at a connection formed through passion and fury in a succession of encounters that are anything but brief.
Said encounters are those between Shane (Blaney) and Úna (Reid), a youthful pair drawn together in the nightlife of late 2010s Belfast. A context which, time has told us, is not so much the place for finding "true love" but instead is the potential pathway to a "one night stand" and all that comes with it – the "now what?" after the possibly dreamy spontaneity. If a one night stand can deliver a momentarily pleasing answer, its five year equivalent can lead to continuously punishing questions – and credit is due to Blaney and Reid for how they and their fellow playmakers skilfully circumnavigate us through the choppiness of Shane and Úna's waters with exquisite deftness.
Various storytelling devices are cleverly integrated during the course of the seventy-five minute, one act play, such as a smart use of popular eighties tunes and movies for more than nostalgia purposes, and an intelligent adaptation of the "both sides now" viewpoint last seen in Strahan and Íde Simpson's brilliant Cailíní, which provides us with thoughtful and eye-opening insights into Shane and Úna's respective perspectives. With these, and at times astonishing physical expressiveness from the actors, we're witness to themes too numerous to mention in their entirety. Why does one feel compelled to apologise when they don't need to? Why can it be so hard for one person to say "I love you" to their significant other? What happens when the pressure of keeping up appearances becomes too much to bear? When does a dwelling or a city always thought of as a home stop feeling like "home"? And what kind of effect can both circumstantial restrictions and the loss of closeness to a relative have on an already turbulent partnership, especially when the darkest moments of said partnership really look like finding a way to heal or stabilise before instability intervenes?
What this all adds up to, for both Shane and Úna in addition to their Five Year Stand, is the potential for finding out the painful truths of premature aging and a magnified appreciation of pleasures once deemed to be small and routine. In going down this route, the play successfully blends what one might call the craic in everything with the cracks in everything, exhibiting the unique complications of one and another's relationship with who they love, who they're with and where they live – and in doing so, it's an undoubted corker.
Simon Fallaha
Five Year Stand runs at the studio at Belfast's Grand Opera House until Saturday June 29. For more information, and tickets, click here.