The Unconquered

Published Monday 19 February 2007 at 10:35 by John di Folco

There is a touch of the Lewis Carroll to Torben Betts’ new play. Nothing is quite what it seems and what is said spins giddily between the surreal, the mundane and a ghastly graphic reality. Like Keith McIntyre’s brilliantly simple but striking set - a skeletal house - it is a contorted, skewed world we are sucked into.

Just briefly, you could even be forgiven for considering it cliched. A rebellious, highly articulate teenage Goth girl spews projectile invective at her stereotypical middle class parents and their cosy, conventional values, until all get caught up in sudden revolution which topsy-turvies their world into chaos, material destruction, rape and death. But Betts’ genius with language, verbal imagery and sense of structure lift it into an altogether different dimension and the realm of the extraordinary, reflecting upon mankind through symbolic distortion and caricature that is cruel, comic and profoundly disturbing.

It is doubtful that a better company could have premiered this challenging play. Muriel Romanes’ Stellar Quines production bring a high wattage intelligence and understanding to bear on the complexities and constantly shifting nuances that run through this piece. The cast seize and relish the expressive power of the dialogue, timing its repetitive rhythms to perfection and maintaining the crucial frenetic pace throughout.

Pauline Turner portrays the girl with a brutal conviction - repellent, emotionally super-charged and harrowing. As her doll-like parents, Jane Guernier and Kevin McMonagle are magnificently dysfunctional and bewildered as their ideals are shredded and their arid relationship is torn apart. And a superb sharply observed performance, too, from Nigel Barrett as the nervy soldier who slides seamlessly into middle class respectability.