Playwright Deirdre Kinahan teamed up with actor Bryan Murray to create a play he could perform, despite suffering from the memory-loss condition of Alzheimer’s. The result, a 60-minute show co-produced by SoFFt Productions and the Abbey, is an intrepid curio.
urray is well known to older Irish audiences from groundbreaking TV shows like Strumpet City and The Irish RM, and also, more recently, from Fair City. Kinahan’s play is an off-kilter take on the idea of a memory-play. How do you make a memory-play when you cannot fully remember?
We get the life-story of an actor called James. He grows up in Dublin and becomes a star on the London stage. It’s not presented as a biography of Murray, but the life of James runs in parallel to Murray’s own life; it is impossible to separate the player from the play. There is a delightful account of a young actor starting off at the Abbey Theatre; a mother who believes her son is a “natural” for the stage; a childhood friend, the local tough boy, with whom James shares an awkward kiss that descends into fisticuffs, and they never speak again. There is a love called Sara. Some miscarriages. A daughter.
Director Louise Lowe, accustomed to dealing with scattered material, allows the story to follow its loose rhythms. Murray is paired onstage with younger actor Matthew Malone, who plays versions of James, trying to remember, and shepherding Murray like a guardian angel. Conor Jacob’s moving frames set and Ciaran Bagnall’s futuristic lighting create abstract contexts of shape and moods. Paul Frost’s music for a string quartet, live played, provides expansive emotional cushioning.
The last time I saw Murray on stage was in a revival of Kinahan’s play Halcyon Days three years ago at the Viking Theatre. If he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s at the time, you couldn’t tell. He has fully lived the actor’s life, and this is a wry and touching account of it. Now looking terrific in a russet-coloured suit with a red waistcoat, his stage presence is still strong. A significant Irish actor takes a well-earned bow.
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