When it comes to dramatising the real life situations of hard-pressed, working class Belfast women, no writer has a surer touch than Marie Jones. While the content of her latest play - commissioned and first produced by Paines Plough and Oran Mor - concentrates on the struggle to make ends meet in today’s chilly economic climate, in spirit and inspiration it harks right back to the early days of Charabanc, the company she co-founded in 1983, along with four other under-employed actresses. The result is an entertaining double-hander in which Jones makes a punchy directing debut, coaxing deft performances from Tara Lynne O’Neill and Katie Tumelty.
Morally upright Loretta and streetwise Frances are nobodies, underpaid and undervalued care workers, who move like robots from one address to the next, attending to the needs of sick and bedridden people. They know their clients not as individuals but as mere addresses. Without their sardonic sense of humour, they would simply stagger on as victims of the claims and benefits system. But when they are presented with a glimpse of an unexpected windfall, they find themselves spiralling headlong into a nightmare scenario with no escape route. Niall Rea’s carefully detailed design conveys a human life, which has shrunk into virtual anonymity and the first act skilfully blends pin-sharp humour with the poignancy of what it means to be elderly and incapacitated, poor and desperate. After the interval - which could easily be dispensed with - the action turns a touch surreal, repetitive and unwieldy, though the final twist is cleverly crafted with all of Jones’s customary panache.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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