Arts:Blog

Theatre Review: Can't Forget About You **

Michael Cox thinks the sooner this production is forgotten, the better.

In her first scene, Karen Dunbar’s character Martha tells another character that she wants to be completely honest with him. So, I feel duty-bound to take the spirit and cut to the chase: Can't Forget About You is one of the lousiest scripts I've encountered in professional theatre for some time. Full of half-baked scenes, rammed with DOA cliches and populated with characters who consistently go back and forth between being conveniently wise and stupid, sometimes within mere seconds, David Ireland’s play doesn't have one thing going for it.

Director Conleth Hill, however, has just one card up his sleeve that makes watching the production bearable: his cast. How the company of five actors have managed to take the drivel they’ve been given and turn in dignified performances is a flat-out miracle. Declan Rodgers makes Stevie, a twenty-something slacker, into an interesting male lead, while Dunbar creates a vulnerable, sympathetic performance in Martha, a 49-year-old woman enjoying a new lease on life in a relationship that shouldn’t work but somehow does. Carol Moore and Abigail McGibbon have thankless, cliched roles as Stevie’s mother and sister, but they make the best of what they've been given and manage to mine several laughs.

Which is all fine, but even with the most good-will in the world and hard work ethic the company bring, it all comes back to Ireland’s terrible script. You know you're in trouble when the biggest laughs spring from jokes about cunnilingus and a character attempting Ulster-scots; you know you're in bigger trouble when the final three scenes feel the need to signpost and explain every single moment to the audience.

Can't Forget About You might have sprung from good intentions, but there is very little good about it. The sooner it's forgotten, the better.

Can't Forget About You performs at the Tron until July 25.