A GAME OF TWO HALVES

Meeting at Menin Gate, The MAC Theatre.  21^st September 2013

I’m currently watching the X Factor.  Like many of us across the country, I can’t shake my fascination with it.  Nor The Voice.  Nor Come Dine with Me (on which I have a long-held and not-so-secret desire to appear).  I live my life to music, I love books and I’ve probably managed to sit through ten whole films in my lifetime - but from time to time, I suffer from the uncomfortable feeling that I’m suffering from a perilous cultural deficiency.  

This week, my dear madre threw me a rope by way of an invitation to accompany her to Meeting at Menin Gate at the MAC Theatre, a play by Martin Lynch.  By her own admission it would be heavy going.  Given that my mother’s holiday reading tends to consist of biographies of local politicians (“Man of War, Man of Peace” anyone?), this did not bode for a lightsome afternoon.  Nonetheless I accepted the invitation, took a deep breath and prepared to immerse myself in enough political commentary to erase the guilt of the entire season of this year’s X Factor.

The MAC Theatre is a significant enhancement to the ever-expanding Cathedral Quarter.  Its modern and distinctive architecture add to the vaguely European atmosphere of Saint Ann’s Square.  Before Saturday’s performance I’d visited the MAC on several occasions, for work rather than pleasure, and can confirm it bears out as a theatre even more convincingly than it wears its corporate mask. 

 

 

Meeting at Menin Gate is the third part of the “Ulster Trilogy” staged by Green Shoot Productions and directed by Matt Torney.  I had slight trepidation that as the final instalment of a series it would lack the punch of a single piece of standalone theatre - however my fears proved to be unfounded.

The lights go up on a bare set with the two lead characters Terry (James Doran) and Liz (Andrea Irvine) seated in two chairs facing out towards us, the audience.  The genius of both the unassuming set and understated beginning is that the audience is immediately invited into the action.  The first act bypasses the sense of disconnect that can often divide actors and an audience.  Terry is a reformed ex-Republican who was detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for the murder of two soldiers serving in the British Army.  Liz, a Unionist whose father was a member of the RUC, hails from Hillsborough.  The pair convincingly represent two sides of the same coin and are instantly both recognisable and likeable.  They’re thrown together on a trip to Belgium and a love story begins to develop. 

Against the backdrop of this romance, we are cunningly shown brief snapshots of the Troubles as recalled by the characters’ individual flashbacks or narrated to the audience.  The play is also wickedly humourous – the most notable moments of levity being brought to the action by Marty Maguire and Maria Connolly with both playing a multitude of characters and bringing something fresh (and potentially scene-stealing) to each role.  Maguire’s most memorable contribution was as the Paul Weller-loving older brother of Liz’s youth, and Connolly’s as the foul-mouthed yet convincing Cara.

The play’s elegant title certainly lent itself to the simple beauty and subsequent tension of the first half and as we left for the interval on a “cliff-hanger”, I reflected that this was possibly the most emotionally-charged piece of political drama that I had seen since the Lyric staged Frank McGuinness’ “Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme”. 

Nonetheless as the second half began, it became clear that we were watching a different play entirely.  The stage had been dressed realistically (rather than symbolically) and Liz and Terry were no longer facing us; but on their feet and absorbed in their own story.  At this point I should comment that, given the development of the plot, the significance of this was probably appropriate.   There was a noticeable departure from the familiar atmosphere created in the first half - the context being that Liz is forced to face a terrible truth about a traumatic childhood event that ultimately turns her relationship with Terry on its head.  Although initially disappointed that the earlier intimacy we had enjoyed had been lost, I settled in to enjoy the second act.   And then things took a turn for the surreal.     

The MAC Theatre’s listing for this play had warned that an audience should expect “strong language, moderate violence and partial nudity”.  Neither my mother nor I had a problem with any of the above.  Nonetheless we hadn’t anticipated how difficult it is not to laugh in a hushed theatre when a grown man is lying prone on the stage with his trousers and boxers around his ankles, being smacked with a piece of foam disguised as a wooden stake.  I could feel my most inappropriate and high-pitched giggle coming on (which was stifled in the nick of time).  I felt as though we had descended into theatre of the absurd - made even more shocking by the stark contrast with the elegantly-crafted first act. 

The second half continued largely along the same vein of rather unpersuasive and borderline puzzling low-level violence.  At no point was it gratuitous or in any way difficult to bear; but it did feel unconvincing.  Nonetheless the plot continued to develop throughout the second act and it became apparent that this was not a romance, nor a commentary on the differences between Republicans and Unionists, but rather a story of victim and perpetrator.  It was a tale of unresolved anger that documents the difficulties of moving on from the horrors of the Troubles and voices the impotency felt by those affected by “empty chairs at the dinner table”. 

Despite the interludes of violence leaving me somewhat incredulous, the message that I carried away from yesterday’s performance has stayed with me.  The theme of victims and perpetrators is not familiar to my generation.  We are the new wave and (mostly) ready to move on and start afresh.  The truth is that it cannot be any other way; nevertheless Meeting at Menin Gate is a poignant reminder that the aftershocks of our troubled history can still be felt by some.