In Search of Owen Roe

In Search of Owen Roe
Written & performed by Vanessa O’Neil, dramaturgy & direction Glynis Angell. La Mama, Carlton (VIC), 24 June to 5 July 2015

Vanessa O’Neil’s search for Owen Roe takes her all the way back to ‘Red’ Owen Roe, a firebrand freedom fighter against Cromwell’s campaign to subdue Ireland in the 17th century.  It’s a search that became, by her own admission, obsessive, and she dramatises that in the opening sequence of this one-woman show: poring over photocopies of documents and newspaper clippings and maps in the middle of sleepless nights.  She’s aided too by a map of Ireland on one wall and her family tree on the opposite wall – although the family tree acquires more names than you can hold in your head.  The map of Ireland, on the other hand, is useful in cataloguing the locations of her different lovers across her seven trips to Ireland over the years. 

Ms O’Neil tells us that she finds Irish men irresistible and her descriptions of her making no resistance at all to them (sweet but boastful) adds some humour to the proceedings.  You may wonder, however, what Ms O’Neil’s romantic exploits have to do with the search for – as it turns out – her grandfather, the eponymous Owen Roe, a descendant of rebel Red Owen Roe.  Grandfather Owen Roe, she discovers, died in Perth, WA and was buried in an unmarked grave.  Why?  Why?

In fact, despite an extensive development process and much support, there many strands here that never quite gel into a coherent whole.  Ms O’Neil might say she is interweaving these strands, but her show comes off as bits and bobs, at times undoubtedly moving, at times funny, but at times almost stream of consciousness.  By what appears to be loose association, she includes quotes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and portrays her father, Michael O’Neil, succumbing to Alzheimer’s.  When, towards the end, she links Red Owen Roe’s cries for Irish freedom to her own wish to ‘free’ the prisoners in her father’s nursing home dementia ward, she really does stretch too long a bow – and lapses into sentimentality as well.

It is in her marvellous quick segues into other characters in her story that Ms O’Neill shines: the aforementioned Irish charmers, Red Owen Roe making his fiery speeches, her ebullient father, cock-a-hoop at the birth of his grandson, that same father in decline, the grandson, her cheerful son Daniel, the Nurse Ratchet types at the father’s nursing home and Ms O’Neill herself, besieged by relatives who want to know just what she does – exactly? 

Throughout, she is assisted by Darius Kedros’ superb soundscape and Richard Vabre’s lighting, but these can’t quite cover up the awkward joins, jumps and cracks.

Although the question ‘where did I come from?’ is real and eternal – or as the hit television show has it, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ – I’m nor entirely sure we are convinced as to Ms O’Neill’s motives in pursuing her search – beyond mere curiosity.  She cuts deeper and elicits more emotion than the television show (there’s no gossipy  ‘how about that!’), but at the end you might be feeling, ‘And?  So?’ 

Ms O’Neill is a bright and warm stage presence, but much as you might like her, you get a little frustrated and restless.  The show rests to some extent on the sentimental but indestructible Australian obsession with Ireland, but it doesn’t go into that per se - although it easily could have.  Instead, it’s a skilfully delivered but rambling series of anecdotes lacking in edge or point.

Michael Brindley

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