Anna Burnside reviews a production with ‘laboured devices’.
Adoption storylines are beloved of soap opera writers for a reason: they deliver easy emotional heft and the possibility of timebombs ready to go off whenever the plot flags.
Within the PPP format, the plot has to crack on with all urgency, making it hard to bury treasure for future uncovering.
This means that The Brown Doll, about a young woman born in Sri Lanka then adopted by a Swedish family, proceeds with the predictability of night following day.
Within a four-person cast, although massive by PPP standards, there is no hiding place, and sure enough the kindly lady in the Colombo guest house turns out to be a procuress who sold babies to desperate white couples back in the day.
This allows her to fill us all in on the trade in babies that blighted Sri Lanka during the civil war.
Director Niloo-Far Khan asks for far bigger performances than the small Oran Mor venue demands, with Rachel Ogilvy particularly mannered and loud.
There is also a tiresome thread cutting scene at the start, presumably to remind us all that all the characters were linked. Hello, it’s a 50-minute play: of course the characters will all be linked.
Writer Cilla Silvia missed the memo about ‘show don’t tell’ and fills the script with exposition and laboured devices. The result is a play that should have been a YouTube documentary.
The Brown Doll performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint until May 3, 2025.
Photo by Eoin Carey.
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