A harrowing new drama from Ireland that opened tonight at the Public Theater, Cyprus Avenue begins as a dark comedy with absurdist glimmerings and eventually becomes a horror show.
Stephen Rea (of The Crying Game fame) portrays a paranoid man from suburban Dublin whose delusions are revealed to be caused by his existence living amid the decades of hostility and conflict between the peoples of Northern Ireland and Ireland. “I am exclusively and non-negotiably British,” declares Eric, an older gent in a rumpled suit, who freely admits his dislike for the Irish and the Catholics. “Without prejudice, we are nothing.”
David Ireland, the playwright, frames this tragic contemporary story in a series of flashbacks as Eric grudgingly speaks to Bridget (Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo), a cool, condescending psychiatrist. Her assurance that they are in “a safe place” to talk is immediately challenged when Eric addresses her with a racial epithet. It later turns out that this space, which Lizzie Clachan designs simply as a plain expanse of white carpet and a couple of modernistic chairs set upon a profile stage (with the audience seated on either side), ironically proves to be anything but safe for Eric’s family and sensitive viewers.
The innocent spark that ignites this 100-minute nightmare is the arrival of Eric’s newborn granddaughter. Eric’s daughter Julie (Amy Molloy) and his wife Bernie (Andrea Irvine) happily put the gurgling infant into Eric’s arms. He peers at the baby and announces that Mary-May looks exactly like Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein, the left wing political party that Eric fears will destroy the traditional Northern Island that he loves. The women brush off his comments.
Later, after Eric is left alone to mind the baby, Bernie and Julie are horrified to find that he has drawn a black beard on Mary-May with magic marker and perched toy spectacles on her nose in order to complete the resemblance to Adams. Eventually Eric’s increasingly erratic behavior and angry rants get him thrown out of his house on genteel Cyprus Avenue.
Then Eric meets up with Slim (Chris Corrigan), a gun-packing paramilitary Northern Ireland loyalist. Eric shares with the hapless Slim his belief that the baby is just one among many other Irish activists in disguise as babies aiming to destabilize the country. They hatch a plan to kill the child on a day that does not conflict with Slim’s anger management classes. This encounter with a phantasm is a grimly humorous sequence that reveals just how delusional Eric has become.
Then the remainder of the story becomes unspeakable. The action is staged graphically. Blood pools all over that white carpet.
Composed with eerily eloquent monologues for Eric during which he describes his misperceptions of identity and culture, the well-written but extremely bleak Cyprus Avenue is a disturbing portrait of man driven mad by the world that is seething around him.
The production has been staged with precision by Vicky Featherstone, the artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre in London, which co-produced the play with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Shadowed by Stephen Rea’s intense performance in the demanding role of a dour madman who alternates between melancholy musings and escalating rages, the other actors inhabit their roles quietly, although Corrigan has some funny moments as that dunderhead of a terrorist. Although Paul Keogan’s lighting design glares painfully off the white carpeting at times, the production’s minimalist visuals serve to focus the audience on the drama’s words and ideas.
For American spectators who have little knowledge about “The Troubles,” those violent ethnic and nationalist conflicts that engulfed Northern Ireland for more than 30 years, Cyprus Avenue may be a challenge to appreciate fully. The shocking nature of its climax also may be offensive to certain viewers. It is likely that the ever civic-minded Public Theater has imported this play, along with its original production and actors, as a cautionary story for us to contemplate in our own differently troublous times.
