In Barbara Bergin’s epic “losers’ history” of Dublin, street names tell their own story. Tosser’s Pot leads to Cutpurse, then from Pokes Alley to Kiphouse Row. For the residents of the inner-city tenement building where the action opens in 1880, choices are starkly circumscribed and lives are cut short by poverty, disease or violence.
Covering 100 years of life in this house, the narrative traces four families, their lives intertwined through generations, with trauma recurring – to women in particular – echoing the spirit of Seán O’Casey. The historical backdrop is outlined in broad brush: from strikes in the slums to revolution and war, through the early years of the independent state, to the heroin and HIV-Aids crises of the 1980s.
Bergin creates a thread through time in the character of the spirited Honor Gately (Sarah Morris), a sex worker determined to defy her circumstances as “a feculent wench”, whose great-granddaughter, also played compellingly by Morris, breaks old patterns and starts to write a novel.
Honor’s “blubberpus” son (Thommas Kane Byrne) brings gleeful comedy to the role of an accidental patriot in the 1916 Easter Rising. His is one of a number of historical characters conflated by Bergin to pointedly anti-heroic effect: we meet loosely emblematic incarnations of James Joyce, Pádraig Pearse and Brendan Behan, as well as a Bob Geldof/Bono-like singer. A rogues’ gallery of abusive, duplicitous or pathetic men – politicians, priests, wastrel writers – flashes past, with subtlety sacrificed to narrative momentum.
With a dynamic ensemble cast of 19 on stage throughout, the storytelling is elaborate, expansive – and sometimes smothering. Functioning as a constantly shifting chorus taking turns to narrate the plot, the multitalented actors are in a whirlwind of exposition and costume changes, playing more than 120 characters in three-and-a-half hours.
With so much narrative to cram in, the form often hampers the scope for director Caroline Byrne to do more than manoeuvre the cast around Jamie Vartan’s imposing set. Creating a cross-section of the building, the stacked design offers dramatic possibilities, not fully realised. Despite the ambitious scale, commitment and punchy energy of this production, its teeming canvas leaves little room for new insights.
At Abbey theatre, Dublin, until 31 January
