REVIEW: Portia Coughlan, Old Red Lion Theatre ✭✭

Portia Coughlan

Old Red Lion Theatre

1 May 2015

2 Stars

Reviewed by James Garden

For a thriller to make a good thriller, it has to build. Think how little we actually see Jaws and what a shock it is when we finally do. Or the Alien in, well, Alien. Or, to use a stage play, how late in the game we actually meet The Woman in Black. In Portia Coughlan, currently at the Old Red Lion Theatre, there is a fundamental lack of build. When in the opening sequence, you have a woman, rather well played by Susan Stanley, clutching at her abdomen in extreme pain, with the loud pained strains of the Dvorak Cello Concerto, considered to be the epitome of cello concertos by many musicologists, it’s quite hard to build upward from such intensity.

And this production doesn’t. The build towards the big reveal of the script simply isn’t a build at all because everyone on stage is already at their extreme point from the get go, possibly with the exception of Portia Coughlan’s husband, played exceptionally well by Ben Mulhern. In other productions, Susan Stanley has shown great range, but in this, and compared to the other performances which all seem quite static, it seems like a directorial choice, by Bronagh Lagan, as opposed to the choice of any individual actor.

There really is nothing wrong with any individual performance—every actor has crafted a fully formed 3 dimensional character with excellent comedic timing. But the energy of the piece overall is simply stagnant, ironic considering the river allusions that clang around Marina Carr’s script.

An example of this is the ghost who sings that famous tune, She Moved Through The Fair, what seems like every five minutes. That beat feels identical every single time it occurs, which is a staging issue, more than anything else. If one is going to repeat a moment, it needs to add something every time in order to build. So, the first time, it works, but by what seems like the 20th time in less than 90 minutes, it’s grown tiresome.

It’s a pity, because everyone on stage seems to be doing the best with what they’ve been given. But there seems to be a lack of conductor to guide this concerto to a proper climax.

Portia Coughlan runs until May 23, 2015 at the Old Red Lion Theatre