There are times when it befalls the critical spectator the unenviable task to make verdicts on an artist’s mastery; to defend or dissuade without a more assertive recourse. Among a critic’s sometimes-true and sometimes-false legitimacy is their immediate and total opinion, drawn from self-decided expertise. In brief, a review supposes in the experience of a moment what the artist dedicates their life to. If this reevaluation of a critic’s role seems to be an apologetic preamble, perhaps it would only be trustworthy to more often lead with them.
As with performances of this evening, when a certain work ingratiates its own kind of ambivalence, it may often credit the commentary to itself, as would describe the newest theatrical installment, “Safe House,” from playwright and director Enda Walsh and composer Anna Mullarkey, an Abbey Theatre production in a limited run at St. Ann’s Warehouse through March 2.
Out of the ordinary, yet true-to-form and iconic to Walsh, this latest production is seldom beautiful and evocative, frequently head scratching, and brash, leaving more questions to the mind than one would like to suggest. Filled to the brim with raw animus, “Safe House” is an alcohol-aided expulsion of emotional angst and personal dissatisfaction, to the tune of what may be the world’s first misery musical.
In an exquisite but battering arrangement of tone poems, delectably and antagonistically keened by the play’s impresario and anti-narrator Grace (Kate Gilmore), it is an understatement to say it is difficult to outline what exactly this bizarre, impressive, and off-putting act was, beyond the abstract.
Aside from the obvious semblances of the plot—the scorn of a dismal romance; a festering heartbreak; a complicated remembrance of childhood and estranged parental relations; the death of a beloved auntie and a less loved mother; a fallen woman syndrome; the longing for a new life; alcohol dependency to anaesthetize it all—the apparent void of story progression leaves audiences with a lack of resolution that they will arrive at anything past its depressing departures.
Despite the deliberate deprivation by Walsh to refuse us release, neither from the predictable arc of structure, nor at times even from our seats, one meets with alacrity the realization that audiences’ empathies for Grace are not reciprocal, they are obligatory: if Grace cannot escape her agonies and turmoil, neither can we. A psychological entity more than a character perhaps, we deduce quickly that Grace’s spellbound wailing has no direction to it, and no resolve to the conflict is intended; she may simply be venting from inside her safe house.
Grace is in many ways a thoroughly modern misfit: an unfulfilled fairytale desiring grace, but impossibly incapable of attaining it. Walsh might remark here that these are the times we now inhabit, for better or worse: in an age of social media, vulnerable people post the most excruciating details of their private lives on very public platforms, mistaking them for safe spaces. The tragedy is perhaps in our willingness, as an audience, to accept its extent of unsolicited emotional reality.
Albeit a theory, the production will either thrive or fail on the collective empathy of its audience for a stranger who doesn’t make it easy to be approached. Tinged with punk attitude, one senses this production toys and teases the audience with its petulant and sincere pain. In moments when Grace walks through her fourth wall, she is as surprised at our reaction to her relentless exposures as our surprise is at the reaction of hers. Did she think that we were all friends?
An assault of musicality, “Safe House” is the chronicle of a melodic meltdown with doses of rebel yell, and a kindred companion to Lars Von Trier’s “Dancer in the Dark”; with Gilmore as a sardonic and convincing Irish princess counterpart to Bjork. As a curious introduction for Walsh and Mullarkey into the realm of rock opera, a comparison to “The Threepenny Opera,” may be fitting.
In its uneven effectiveness, timing and song selection seem to make all the difference. After a slew of bleak and overwhelming ballads from the outset, culminating in the raucous and almost unbearably unnerving “Hot Bath” it is nearly a showkiller, while the subsequently breathtaking odes “The Sea,” “Safe House” and “Gone” reveal Walsh and Mullarkey’s hand; that true sincerity is within their grasp and whim. The majority of their confrontational clatter left not a few audience members on edge, anxious to leave for the safety of their own homes.
Two things, safe to say, make this production worthwhile to witness; one namely is the concerted geniuses of set designer Katie Davenport, video designer Jack Phelan, sound designer Helen Atkinson and lighting designer Adam Silverman, whose menacing mise-en-scene, haunting filmic memories, and tormented sonic effects culminate in a theatrical landscape that is truly riveting.
The premiere reason, and saving grace of this production’s continual attraction, is the performance by Kate Gilmore, whose expressionist embodiments of intrigue—for whatever it is—certainly is undeniable and hypnotic. Even if we want to look away, we cannot, for want of not missing her fearless performance. Gilmore gives an allure of real privacy, the experience of the inner feelings we seldom ever know or say aloud.
“Safe House” isn’t simple to pin, or to scrutinize comfortably. Maybe the production is an exercise in pointing out that anti-cathartic caterwauling and doom-and-gloom of recent Irish theatre has made for some pretty unpleasant outings. Or it may be to say that a life whose drama lacks genuine self-reflection, and at least a stubborn measure of conceding catharsis, is a very unsatisfying prospect. There is an unexpectedly juvenile rage coursing through this production, even by Walsh’s usual tendency to neurotic shock and frenzy.
Walsh’s newest work leaves us pondering: why beckon Brecht at a time like this? Are we not alienated enough? Is it accusatory, to say theatre has become an indulgence of navel-gazing for likeminded whiners? Or are the woes of the modern “adult-child” an alienation in themselves?
A theatrical tantrum isn’t productive perhaps for this reason; you can kick and scream all you please, but is a “safe space” really safe if its trauma won’t let you leave? “Please stay there,” a voice says to Grace, but who is saying it?
Mind what you’re walking into.
For tickets, visit stannswarehouse.org
