Pentescost at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast
Bless me people but it’s been one year since I last saw Pentecost.
It wasn’t live that time – but a screening of the 1990 BBC production with Adrian Dunbar as Lenny and Michelle Fairley as Ruth. It was at the Brian Friel Theatre, and followed the inaugural Stewart Parker Lecture, delivered by his friend and Field Day compatriot, Stephen Rea. I was glad my tissue and I were in the back row, being an emotional fish.
But that was then, this is now. My point is, the play was still fairly fresh in my mind. This play will always be relevant.
Stewart Parker was a celebrant of this city, an enigmatic visionary who left a literary legacy, a theatrical imprint of our troubled social and political history. Aged only 47 when he died, he left behind a body of work which deserves regular resurrection, lest we forget.
So more power to the Lyric’s Executive Director Jimmy Fay for tackling Pentecost and presenting a production as close to perfect as possible. This is as good as it gets.
Flawless.
Waiting for the performance to start, there’s time to take in the stage set, to let it seep in. Outside, it’s a wet Wednesday night. The walk from the car with a leaky left boot gives me soggy sock syndrome, but the discomfort soon dissipates. Laid out before me, is a living room, circa 1930. The detail is intriguing – from the weeping wallpaper to the cheap tack ornaments, the statuettes, the picture frames (once precious possessions to some poor soul); the tassled tilted lamp shades, the mantelpiece lace, that old biscuit tin stuffed under the sideboard – the one that morphed into a sewing box somewhere in time. A scene of dusty, disheartened domesticity, oddly tarnished and preserved for posterity.
Marian comes on stage and starts casually examining the ornaments, yet with a sense of purpose. Lenny with his trombone enters stage left.
Death lingers there. Inner East Belfast, May 1974 – the Ulster Workers Strike, a small run down terraced house, a living room with kitchen rear-set.
Opening dialogue between estranged husband and wife is terse and clipped; oddly it flows.
“Did you make tea?”
“The gas is off”.
The sitting tenant has died. Lenny of middle class Catholic stock, is now the legal owner, even though Marion reminds him, that ‘property is theft’ in his book. She more than hints at hypocrisy.
The spit and spat dialogue of that opening scene – two tongues that lash and back lash – reveals characters that unfurl, their familial knowledge of each other, their ambiguous circumstances, yet somehow the theme is loneliness. Lenny has just returned from the funeral of an old woman he never knew, a courtesy required by a split society, a task undertaken sullenly – Lenny laments “being tongue-lashed by the Free Presbyterian notion of a requiem Mass”.
The dialogue is priceless. No word is made redundant – each laden with purpose, each with a job to do; textured language that drips from their tongues unhindered, oftentimes words that are determined to come out, even when they hurt, words that cannot be left unsaid, each tinged with Parker’s worldly wisdom, an opportunity for social, political and religious commentary delivered with ease and wit – and that is precisely the spirit of this play called Pentecost.
The setting; the time; the state we’re in – everything is integral to the plot and the time its set in.
Big questions of church and state are churned up and thrown out before we even know they are upon us. Marion swigs from her whiskey bottle, dissing Lenny for being a faux –free spirit, for his bottomless vulgarity. He slurs her antique business, her bourgeois past times and pseudo interests.
Both Marion and Lenny are dropped into an incongruous setting by a twist of fate. The place is ‘riddled with rot’.
East Belfast is in deadlock.
We’re in the thick of the Ulster Workers Council strike of May 1974, we are reminded throughout of the turmoil outside and within. There is no gas, electricity supply is intermittent, food is sparse, milk is powdered.
Marion is a woman at her wit’s end. She could be on the verge of madness, or the only sane soul in the house. The little, lonely life of Lily Matthews lingers in every icon and item. Marion develops a fascination, and fancies the voice of Lily at first until she appears like the risen dead.
Lily Matthews, born 1900, marries Alfie Matthews 1918, just back from Paschendale. Alfie was a gas fitter; Alfie died a violent death at the hands of fenians. If it wasn’t for the fire service, Lily says, she wouldn’t be here now.
Marion reminds her that she isn’t.
We grasp Marion’s strength, courage and wisdom, she has that core of cheesed off, battle weary Belfast woman (brilliantly portrayed by Judith Roddy). At only 33, she is almost hard but not quite. There is hope for her yet. Her mouth is held firm, her caring character under-wraps. She’s the woman who will tell you to catch a grip, yet still be the friend you turn to in times of need.
Enter stage left on cue – here comes the friend in a time of need. Ruth needs help. She turns up unannounced, her head split and bleeding by a thump from her husband’s truncheon. Marion and Ruth’s friendship is incongruous too – different tribes, a shared interest in swimming, a friendship that spanned good times and bad.
“Remember your flat in Magdala Street?” Ruth asks.
Marion remembers it well. (Ha – I wonder if it was No 37, my old student haunt. I remind myself, ‘tis only fiction).
Ruth is a mess, but with a sharp tongue in her head. The women spat. Ruth has nowhere to go, and now they are three – or is that four – in this Godforsaken place?
There’s room for one more surely. Lenny arrives back the worse for wear from whatever pub was left open in the city. He has Peter in tow, an old friend from uni, just back from Birmingham. A chartered surveyor – someone Marion may find useful. Peter brings with him a new dynamic.
The electricity is back on for a few hours – “Power without responsibility” Lenny quips, a dig at the strikers who have stopped the gas, deliveries of petrol, animal supplies, milk (three quarters of Ulster cows are Protestant you know).
Peter becomes a consequential house guest – back from the conurbation with his big bag of metaphorical museli and his Liliputian wit.
The only one who wants to be there is Marion, tormented by her own ghosts and feeling a peculiar connection with the bitter wee she-ghost. Lily feels put upon. She wants them gone.
Mob law rules. This is Rant City – he rants, she rants, they rant – lots of ranting in this play (and Nolan hadn’t even been invented yet).
Lenny is outraged, he got burgled. He rants about the Ulster Sunday – remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, keep it bleak – remember the historic days in Liliput – the great rising of ’74, when the little people got angry. ‘It’s not a strike, but a constitutional stoppage’ Lenny is on a roll.
Lenny, Peter, Marion, Ruth – these actors have captured their roles to a tee. Roisin Gallagher in particular reminds me of Michelle Fairley in the production for BBC.
The language, the dialogue is so laden and lithe it’s hard to keep up – the Biblical references just keep on rolling… whatever possessed you? Who’s haunting who?
Lily is haunted now by the baby white Christening gown on Marion’s knee, like a lace-white empty sepulchre laid out for all to see. The baby it belonged to is gone, given away; Lily, as it happens, has a heart breaking story to tell, that unravels before our ears – herewith the revealing connection between the older and younger women (the unexplained connection), as Marion’s boy-child Christopher died in infancy. It is a barren house says Marion, how could there be any future in a place like this?
Ruth’s dramatic rant in response to Harold Wilson’s notorious “Spongers Speech” is pure theatre, and from her mouth spills words that spilled out across this land at the time. Parker is reflecting that era right back at us, the hurt, the horror, the disgust, the anger. Ruth becomes a representation of her people, her tribe.
Lenny’s rant in return serves the same purpose, representing his ‘tribe’ – no food, no light, English museli – the ape men are in charge, the people are penned in their own homes; nurses and doctors have to get passes just to get to work; the sewage workers are ordered out – “This is not a protest movement, this is root and branch fascism”. Why are the police not intervening – shops are being looted in Ballyhackamore, Marion’s car is hijacked – the animals have taken over the zoo, while his QC uncle is sitting very comfortably in his big house in Fortwilliam.
“God I’m hungry” says Peter “Do you want some museli?”
You couldn’t make it up – only a genius could pull this off with such mastery – Parker’s prognosis is gloomy. In fact, it hits me, with a certain despair, that some of the language, the sentiments, the themes are as applicable now as they were forty years ago, sadly – the more things change, the more they stay the same. Like a broken record, stuck in a groove, are we to stay stuck in some never-ending purgatory – in perpetuity?
This is why I believe Parker was a gifted visionary. Pentecost is pure poetry from first to final line. By resurrecting Pentecost at this time, has director Jimmy Fay nudged our recollection of the past so as to prompt us to sing a new song?
I wonder, maybe I digress too much.
The plot thickens. “The four of us” have been thrown together for weeks now under the same roof, with the presence of Lily growing heavy and burdened.
Marion is tired and emotional – she wants rid of the three parasites in the abandoned place she calls home, “I’m staying here with my tongues and you are going home with your trombone”.
Everything is symbol, the trombone is symbol, clashing cymbal; the ghostly noir-esque shadows on the walls, Peter’s bleeding bloody red hand of Ulster, like stigmata – laden with Biblical reference and iconic emblems.
The hovering helicopter heralds the return to ‘normality’. The strike is over. The madness returns.
There is a moment of light relief – the two men reminisce on carefree student days. A friend, an eternal student and chemistry researcher, had synthesized LSD – enough to fill full sweetie jars and pass it off as confectionery. They’d been ‘tripping’ for a few days when they had a brainwave – to pile in the car and head down to the Silent Valley and fill the reservoir with the contents of the sweetie jars, enough to ensure the population of Belfast was filled with peace and love, man – “no more bigotry and hatred”. It wasn’t to be, ironically, for the UVF got there first and blasted the Silent Valley to kingdom come.
Then comes the crescendo. The closing scene like a rush of wind around the walls:
Peter and Ruth quote the Bible chapter and verse. Revelations. (While we’re on the theme, Marion reveals she found a used condom behind the sofa in the front room).
“Pentecost is upon us” Peter harangues Lenny “so where ‘s the fire in your tongue?” .
He compares Lenny’s trombone efforts as “farting into the wind”. A step too far, the friends come to blows, this dysfunctional ‘holy family’ exposed and overcome.
Ruth’s violent husband is in Purdysburn – she has to learn to forgive; Marion must reconcile with her own self after the death of her infant child, Peter and Lenny struggle with reconciliation – ultimately the only way out is redemption, and all that remains is hope.
“Therefore did my heart rejoice and my heart was glad” Ruth reads from her Gideon.
Pentecost was brilliantly executed by Jimmy Farr, with outstanding performances by this cast – in particular the character of Ruth (Roisin Gallagher). The lighting, sound effects, and stage design deserve special mention as characters in their own right – but the last word must go to detail in the costume design, so cleverly interpreted and re-visited– even made me nostalgic for my old quilted dressing gown and mustard PVC tunic. Eat your heart out 1974, the Lyric went there, oh yes it did.
Briliant, shame it’s over now – can’t wait for the next trip to the Lyric, so much coming up –
Visit www.lyrictheatre.co.uk/whatson
- Stewart Parker’s would have celebrated his 73rd birthday on Monday 20th October 2014.
His legacy lingers.
- The 2014 Stewart Parker Memorial Lecture was delivered by Adrian Dunbar as part of the Belfast Festival at Queen’s on Saturday 18th October.
Pentecost ran from the 20th September to 18th October.
Director: Jimmy Fay
Cast:
Ruth – Roisin Gallagher
Lily – Carol Moore
Marian – Judith Roddy
Lenny – Paul Irvine
Peter – Paul Mallon
Set and costume desigher – Alyson Commings
Lighting Designer – Ciaran Bagnall
Sound designer – Fergus O’Hare