Lorna Irvine reviews the 'shocking, devastating but absolutely vital,' double-header at A Play, a Pie and a Pint.
With the recent
Remembrance Sunday services still so present in people's minds, this double
bill meditating on the consequences of conflict is timely indeed.
Loyalty, written by Mike Gonzalez, follows cheeky, naive teenager Danny (Daniel Boyd) being recruited by an Officer (Harry Ward) who promises camaraderie: the army as an extended family. As the lad gets changed into his army fatigues, his pale skinny body only serves to underline the vulnerability of his youth. Several months have passed and Danny is now in the thick of the war (Andrew Cowan's looped sound of gunfire and chaos is truly chilling) and faced with the prospect of shooting a young mother. He is frozen to the spot, screaming, wanting no part of it- but escape, as the steely-eyed Officer reminds him, is not an option.
Paul Laverty's Operation Phantom Fury is almost unbearably tense. An anonymous ex-soldier, brilliantly portrayed by Michael Nardone, has been to Hell and is taking the audience with him in a relentless monologue of brutality, spoken almost in real time. Only once does he pause, trying to piece the memories together (or perhaps shake them off). On the screen behind him are horrifying real images of disfigured babies, casualties of radioactive uranium—these are the pictures that will never make the evening news, yet cannot be deleted from the mind.
Stassi Schaeffer's direction of both plays is absolutely unsparing: shocking, devastating, but absolutely vital.
RSS