Last night I went to see the Orchard Theatre Company's "Five Kinds of Silence". The topic of familial abuse is not one that is going to get people rubbing their hands together saying "Oh I can't wait to go to the theatre tonight!" I mentioned the show to a few people and most were not interested in attending when they heard the main theme. This is a shame. It was one of the best pieces of theatre that I have seen in a long time.
The running time is about one hour and ten minutes without an interval. It's a shorter play but then it would be hard to sit through anything on this topic that dragged on. The actors were also on stage for the whole performance. The way this was achieved added greatly to the overall feel of the performance. The stage itself was barren except for a few items. From the point of view of touring, it was great to see what could be achieved with use of simple props and costumes.
Billy, is the father and from the moment he begins to speak we get an insight into his corrupted and strange sense of reality. His first monologue is reminiscent of something from Iain Bank's "The Wasp Factory" or the stalking sequences in Patrick Süskind's "Perfume". The theme of scent returns again throughout the play being used to great effect in a later development within the play. Scent is primordial and is the only sense we cannot re-create from imagination. Yet it is probably the most evocative and memory inducing.
The overall performances from the cast was outstanding but special mention has to be given to actor who played Billy. Yes he had an amazing script to work with but the depth of his performance really made the show believable. Billy is a monster but monsters are not born that way - they are created! The actor who played Billy brought you inside his life, his experiences. You felt every slap, every rejection, every ounce of the degradation of spirit which he endured and brought him to the point where the bullied becomes the bully. It could have been so easy to slip into portrayal with Billy as an evil monster yet this production managed to maintain a balance - between disgust over Billy's actions and sympathy for the tortured individual he became.
I think overall going to see this play and this particular production would be a worthwhile experience. In Ireland, like other places with a large Catholic population, we have been rocked by stories of institutional and clerical abuse scandals. The theme of familial abuse is often over-shadowed by these scandals. Yet the themes within this play are universal. We are more likely to raped, abused and murdered by someone we know than by a random stranger. At night we lock our doors to keep these strangers out and yet it can be the people we are locked in with that could potentially hurt us more!
If you have time tonight go see this play - it wont take a lot of your time or cost you very much - but it will leave an impression and keep you thinking long after you have left the theatre space.
15 April · 20:00 - 22:00
Tickets 10€, Concessions 8€
Camden Palace Hotel
Camden Quay
Cork, Ireland
Great review! I agree that this kind of thing is often overlooked. Being from the US, there is more open discussion about these topics there nowadays. Still work to be done, of course, but I get the impression that Ireland is still catching up in terms of openly discussing issues of abuse, neglect, and mental health. Hoping progress continues to be made in both places, elsewhere in the world, and also within the fields of health care (mental, physical, spiritual), as well.
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