Martyna Majok’s Ironbound (★★★★☆), first produced by Steppenwolf in 2014, is a portrayal of survival which switches back and forth between the early 1990s and 2014. Written to honour the experience of the Polish-American playwright’s mother, it follows Darja (Olga Fedori), a Polish immigrant in New Jersey who is tired of talking about love. She wants concrete things: a car, a bed and, above all, cash to help her son.
Ironbound unfolds in a series of dialogues between Darja and three men. First is her on-off partner Tommy (Aongus Óg McAnally), then her Polish husband Maks (Konstantin Stanchev) who leaves her to pursue his dream of being a musician. The third is a young male sex worker, Vic (Lewis Harris), who finds Darja sleeping under cardboard on the street, her safety net gone.
With all scenes staged at a bus stop beside the shut-down factory where Darja used to work, the contained setting adds dramatic intensity to a script that closely observes the changes in Darja over the years: becoming less hopeful, more transactional. Performed compellingly with reined-in emotion by Fedori, confrontational moments are also tautly directed by Aoife Spillane-Hinks.
Designer Naomi Faughnan’s skyline of skyscrapers and sagging overhead wires, lit in deep rust tones by Matt Burke, creates an emblematic image of post-industrial hinterland. Calling to mind John Berger’s book A Seventh Man, this powerful production shines light on the life of someone who had been invisible.
While romance is a luxury in Ironbound, it is viewed as a necessary fiction in Nancy Harris’s ironic new comedy for the Abbey theatre. Having fun with the cliches of romcom, Somewhere Out There You (★★★☆☆) teases the audience with an absurdly accelerated romance, juggernauting towards a fantasy wedding.
Even if nobody in Casey (Eimear Keating)’s family believes that her smooth new boyfriend Brett (Cameron Cuffe) is who he says he is, the apparent perfection of the new couple’s relationship causes tremors in everyone else’s. Hypocrisy, jealousy and disappointed hopes seem to find a Brett-shaped hole, while Casey’s unhappily married sister Cynthia (Danielle Galligan) thinks she may have found true love at last.
Director Wayne Jordan’s bright, buoyant production of a baggily structured, overlong script has the large cast swirling through dreamy tableaux of Dublin and Paris, on a stage fringed by tinsel curtains. An elaborate plot twist takes its time to arrive, with observations about the parallels between role-play and artifice in theatre and in love losing some of their sharpness along the way.
Six characters in search of sanctuary have moments of self-awakening in Quake (★★★☆☆), a delicately meditative new play by Janet Moran for Once Off Productions and Mermaid Arts Centre. Not exactly group therapy or a formal church service, the Sunday gatherings of this oddly assorted sextet in a Quaker meeting room have a choral structure – only lacking a conductor.
Through a cycle of seasons in one year, five meetings are depicted; it’s as much an animated painting as a dramatisation, a composition created by designer Paul Keogan. A magnificent elm tree dominates the stage, the focal point for the passage of time, changing light, colour and tone throughout. The human figures arrange themselves in a circle and speak when they feel moved to do so.
A suggestive setting for a play, it allows access to characters’ thoughts, with the interplay between public utterance and private feelings drawing us in. Sensitive performances – from Karen Ardiff, Elaine O’Dwyer, John Olohan, Ruairí Heading, Alison McKenna and Ronan Leahy – unlock under Conall Morrison’s direction, highlighting flashes of anger and confusion with lots of gentle humour. It’s a bit too gentle, often sentimental too, which is why a break-out dance to a Talking Heads track comes as a welcome release of pent-up energy.
A stranger at the door, a clumsy houseguest, a mother and daughter-in-law who don’t see eye to eye: all are cooped up in a rural cottage in The Loved Ones (★★★☆☆). Erica Murray’s play for Rough Magic and the Gate theatre was written during the Covid pandemic when strained, claustrophobic relations could easily be imagined. A sudden death is another way to bring characters together, and here the solitary life of the dryly humorous Nell (Jane Brennan), grieving for her son, is interrupted by the arrival of the pregnant Gabby (Fanta Barrie). As she hears this young student’s story, Nell realises that she knew nothing about her son’s private life, just as his widow (Gráinne Keenan) arrives carrying his ashes.
Truth-telling conversations about motherhood and marriage ensue, comically interrupted by an Airbnb guest and ornithology enthusiast (Helen Norton), who has her own moment of revelation. A script that might have had more to say about often unspoken experiences of pregnancy, fertility and loss takes a predictable turn. Brennan’s fine, nuanced performance is at the heart of this somewhat schematic, sitcom style set-up and staging, which begins as a farce of sorts and ends in backstory and fuzziness.
Dublin theatre festival runs until 15 October. The Loved Ones continues at the Gate until 21 October, Somewhere Out There You continues at the Abbey until 4 November, and Ironbound is at the Abbey until 11 November.
