The Stage

Small Miracle

Published Wednesday 6 June 2007 at 10:35 by Mary Redman

Chloe Lamford’s set uses a Knock picture postcard motif with a real caravan placed cater corner. Not only is the family an East-West fusion but so is Marcus Christensen’s soundtrack.

Ella Vale’s Sadie, a dynamic little Dublin teenager, is bored rigid, and ‘whatever’ is the same in an Irish accent.

Souad Faress’s Meera proves a Hindu mother can single-handedly beat the socks off a Jewish one in the demanding, guilt -provoking and moaning stakes. She doesn’t take prisoners and says fuck like she really means it. Looking and sounding like a melodramatic witch, it’s a prime role that Faress relishes. Even if in Act one her physical limitations are OTT and not really thought through. The main bone of contention is that her writer son (Kulvinder Ghir) is involved with a Western woman, Gina Isaac’s stressed out Bronagh, Sadie’s over protective mother.

Sadie sees visions, Meera gets cured, while Peter Dineen’s genial caravan park attendant, constantly up to his elbows in the toilets and “in the business of miracles”, revitalises an ecstatic Meera.

Billing this premiere of Neil D’Souza’s first professionally produced play as The Kumars meet Father Ted, overloads it with prior expectations.

The play seems unsure of what it wants to be when it grows up: long sentimental passages alternate with brief funny ones. Early days yet for production and writer.

Quite why the Mercury downsized its auditorium for a smaller, curtained-off area beats me.