Heaven

Mal and Mairead are a fifty something married couple returning for a wedding to the dreary Irish village of her childhood, the place now in much the same decline as her marriage. 

She’s feisty and embittered, a social worker, while Mal is a kind if innocuous teacher who avoids all conflicts. Now in sensible adulthood, both pine for the freedom and bold choices they let pass with their youth, to even now express their true selves.

Not that they ever speak to each other, onstage at least. Eugene O’Brien’s celebrated two hander unfolds with alternating monologues to the audience.  This way, more than with a marital dialogue, they both get straight to the point with their yearnings and insecurities.  The marriage is just the backstory. And with their self-deprecation, candour and heavy Irish accents, these two are highly authentic, individual and often hilarious.

Lucy Miller is cutting and commanding as Mairead, determine to re-explore the overpowering passion she still remembers for a local lad.  He’s taken to the drink a bit, but who cares! With her husband, things in the bed have been dead for years.

Mal meanwhile is sharing his attempts since childhood to not be gay; long sublimated into his delicious Catholic obsession with the figure of Jesus who – when Mal’s lucky – climbs down from the cross and wraps him in holy arms.  When Mal spots a Jesus look-alike at the wedding reception, things are really looking up.

This story of lifelong homosexual denial is familiar and often painful but Noel Hodda is endearingly authentic and comic playing an innocent and joyous Mal coming out in new worlds – aided by some coke with Jesus.

These are two fine actors voicing an exquisitely written play, comically punctuated and well-blocked on an essentially naked stage by director Kate Gaul.  Lighting by Topaz Marlay-Cole helps shift our focus between the actors, and by the end we’re also enlightened with a few partnership virtues of marriage.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Alex Vaughan