This Piece of Earth by Richard Dormer
Richard Dormer's new play, This Piece of Earth, which was just premiered at the , ends its run at OMAC tomorrow night before touring. I saw the production last night and took part in a panel event afterwards, responding to the play and exploring its historical background and contemporary resonance.
Summaries of the play tend to say, "a love story set in north Antrim during the "; but it is so much more. This is a profound meditation on life and death, and the journey from one the other, against the backdrop of a catastrophe that erased twelve per cent of the Irish population.
Diego Pitarch’s set invites the audience to recognise both the inescapability of death facing John and Maeve and the sacredness of their final journey. Extraordinary performances by Lalor Roddy, Pauline Goldsmith and Richard Dormer combine immense physicality with emotional intensity to produce -- under superb direction from Rachel O’Riordan -- one of the most intellectually engaging hours of theatre you're likely to experience this year.
Yet another stunning production from Ransom, a new company (founded in 2002) that is quietly transforming the landscape of Northern Irish theatre.
It has taken a surprisingly long time for Irish writers and playwrights to address the Irish famine. Last night, Robert Welch (who contributed the Irish language sections of the play) suggested one possible explanation for this -- that Irish culture was traumatised by this tragedy into a kind of speechlessness. Perhaps middle-class Irish writers in the decades following the famine underwent something like "holocaust guilt" at having survived this national calamity.
We also talked about the reponse of British authorities -- catastrophic mismanagement and disgraceful disinterest rather than attempted "genocide" seemed to be the view of most -- and speculated about how the international community today might learn from Ireland's experience of the famine; and how contemporary Ireland, north and south, might learn from the past as we approach new and continuing "blights" such as sectarianism, racism, xenophobia and homophobia. As I say, this play will make you think.
This Piece of Earth continues at the Old Museum Arts Centre in Belfast until Saturday, then moves to The Craic, Coalisland, 4th May; Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick 5th May; Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, 9th May; Market Place Theatre, Armagh city, 10th May; Ardhowen Theatre, Enniskillen, 11th May; The Playhouse, Londonderry, 12th May; Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, 15th & 18th May; Town Hall Theatre, Galway city, 17th & 19th May.
Comments
There is absolutely no evidence that Ransom Productions have transformed the theatre scene here or anywhere else for that matter. I saw this play on Monday past - it's a clumsy piece of writing and has sectarianised the Famine by suggesting Protestants didn't know anything about it until now.
As for the panel discussion, I suspect the directress knew you'd blog about it and get her some free publicity. It was a waste of £9.00.
Famine Fan, what a very strange comment to write. This play has been greeted with critical superlatives across the local theatrical world. The "directress" comment tells me everything I need to know about you. The play does not claim that Protestants knew nothing about the famine. The writing is so clumsy that it's already been picked by the British Council to tour for them. Nine pounds? It was a bargain. I saw the play earlier this week and found it very moving. Others should not allow a sexist "famine fan" to sectarianise this.
"critical superlatives" across the local theatrical world hardly suggest work of a high standard. Remember Marie Jones? And you can work out nothing from my use of the word 'directress'' - I was according using the precise gender-appropriate form of the word. In places Piece of Earth was clumsy, preaching, didactic and showed real signs of over-researched effort. As for the British Council invitation, wise up! It's a three hander that lasts under an hour - a cheap show to take anywhere.
As we put the Troubles to rest are we really expect to beleive that the best thing we can do now is go back to the 19th century for another whinge-fest?
Famine Fan,
How would you describe Brian Friel's "Translations"? A 2-hander that lasts about an hour? You can't dismiss a play because of the number of cast in it or the duration. Waiting for Godot? 2-hander? Monologues? Come on. You can do better than that.
I've been reading extraordinary reviews of Dormer's play from the New Statesman to the Guardian and Indy to the Iish News, Belfast Telegraph, even Stage, the professional publication. You are entitled not to appreciate the play, but you're factually wrong if you say it hasn't been praised in critical reviews.
I am in total agreement with you but you misunderstand my point on the two-hander. The British Council operates on a tight budget, when it is looking to take NI drama on tour such considerations as cast size, set and duration of the play all help drive decisions. Translations is much, much more than a two-hander....
The reviews are extraordinary and appear in many august publications but all written by falliable and occassionaly prejudiced reviewers. I agree it has been praised but not without notice of the flaws in the work. I point to you my original point by Mr Crawley - there is no evidence that Ransom have transformed the drama scene in Belfast.
Google returns 1,060,000 links to the ‘Irish Famine’, 3880 books (252 available through Amazon) including at least 18 works of fiction and 17 dramas. There is a positive glut of stuff on Ireland’s 19th Century terror. Added to the table is Richard Dormer’s ‘This Piece of Earth’, a doleful but mercifully short dirge on the same subject.
From Republicans to Historical Revisionists, writers have explained, explored, excused and re-written ‘The Great Irish Famine’ to suit every taste. What does Ransom Production’s latest offering add to this Famine mountain? Husband and wife famine victims, John and Maeve dole out their last ruminations, revelations and rasping gasps to a well-fed 21st Century Galway audience: there was nothing to eat; peasants starved to death; people ate their children; the authorities were cruel/neglectful/indifferent. Perhaps a closer, more claustrophobic performance space would have helped the ingredients gel a little more cohesively, but sadly this version is not much more lively or enlightening than the text on page 345 of your offspring’s Second Year History textbook.
Dormer’s unrelentingly bleak and Beckett aspiring script struggles along peppered with some extraneous cúpla focail, half intoned sean nós and a some poetic titbits. Rachel O’Riordan’s direction of the hard-working Lalor Roddy and Pauline Goldsmith doesn’t have the chance to do more than have the two actors grapple and groan in the mud (bark chippings), James Kennedy’s soundscape is clumsy and Dormer himself as priest/visionary is stridently sectarian and, er, preachy.
Raising the work from an early grave, however, is Diego Pitarch’s stark and inspired set design: a diorama of streaky blacks, browns and grey scudding clouds that is part 19th Century etching and part barren, Yeatsian landscape: a suitably post-apocalyptic purgatory.
‘Lest we forget’ is the unambiguous dictate of ‘This Piece of Earth’. This horrific episode of Irish history has had more memorable and moving memorials.