Family from hell are superb


A WHISLTE IN THE DARK
Tricycle Theatre

TOM Murphy’s extraordinary first endeavour may now be seen as a violent precursor to Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, but where Pinter’s play concerns itself with the inner tensions of sibling rivalry and the stranger’s (sister-in-law) sexual fantasies being aroused by her husband’s misogynistic family, Murphy’s piece focuses on the tribe and the hierarchy of family structure.
It was originally produced in 1961 at Stratford East by Joan Littlewood and presented as a gladiatorial orgy of proletarian power, with the pathetic character of Dada as patrician. This interpretation was lost to many from the Irish community, especially those from Mayo, from where the primitive Carney brothers of the play hail. Dublin’s Abbey Theatre refused to perform the play as it was seen to be too negative and showed the rural Irish in a poor light.
The play is set in Coventry in the late 1950s, where Michael (Pat O’Kane) and his English wife Betty (Esther Hall) invite Michael’s brothers to stay with them. The tension erupts with the arrival of his father, Dada (Gary Whelan) and the youngest son, Des (Kieran Gough), a bright young thing whom Michael had hoped would move away from the emotional gas chamber of the family and go to college.
There are many outstanding performances in this production and excellent all-round commitment and energy, but Whelan’s swaggering Dada is quite breathtaking – a coward, a bully and an egocentric echoing Christy Mahon’s old man in Playboy Of The Western World – it’s little wonder that Christy wanted to kill him.
Esther Hall’s ‘liberal’ English wife, Betty, is truly understanding; however, when it became a choice between her husband’s crazed family and sanity, she chooses the latter, leaving them to their inevitably violent fate.
A fine production, superbly directed by Jacob Murray, and a wonderful ensemble cast – the original family from hell.
Until May 6
020 7328 1000

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