Maz (Eva O’Connor) and Bricks (Ciaran O’Brien) of Eva O’Connor’s 80-minute-swift-and-appealing Maz and Bricks don’t exactly meet cute, certainly not from Maz’s perspective. Brick might see it differently.
They’re sitting opposite each other on a Dublin tram—the Luas line—on the 2017 day when a demonstration is in full swing against abortion. On her way to join the vociferous crowd, Maz is trying to mind her own business, tram-wise. She’s filling in the letters on a placard she plans to hold aloft. She’s especially provoked because only too recently a young woman denied abortion rights in her country and unable to afford a trip to England died.
Bricks, conversing loudly on a mobile phone about his great prowess with women, thinks Maz is drawing him. She overhears him boast as much to a male friend, because there’s no way she couldn’t overhear him. When he finishes the obnoxious chat, she disabuses him of his notion.
And so begins a two-day liaison during which Brick breaks through to Maz, and she begins to get through to him. Though he’s supposed to be picking up his daughter for a trip to the zoo, he’s thwarted by his ex-wife. With unexpected time on his hands, he decides to find Maz in the masses and continue their talk. Though she’s initially put off by his bravado, she realizes she’s finding him attractive and then even more attractive than that. Simultaneously, he progresses from being a young rooster on the prowl to a vulnerable man lowering his guard.
Directing the two-hander Maz and Bricks on set and costume designer Maree Kearns’ uncluttered stage, Jim Culleton does nicely with a Fishamble production transported for the 59E59 Irish Festival. The piece initially gives the impression of wanting nothing more than to be a boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-gets-girl romance.
O’Connor, however, has something serious on her mind. She’s interested in delving deeper into who Maz and Bricks really are. She wants to know whether there are past-history inclinations as well as personality facets that—as they get to know each other—mitigate against a superficial rom-com click.
Revelations surge, perhaps the most significant that Maz had an abortion when she was 17. Bricks insightfully guesses as much about an event she has yet to put behind her. As they spend increasingly intimate time together, Bricks also lets it become apparent that his macho strut is only a disguise he wears to conceal misgivings about himself.
At its core, Maz and Bricks is a statement about the baggage men and women carry with them that too often precludes easy bonding. As O’Connor fills in details, she does well at providing the cracks in Brick’s current make-up. He clearly loves his daughter and is hurt by his separation from her. His unfulfilled attempts to bridge the gulf that his ex-wife exacerbates saddens him. His attempts to ignore them have ceased to be effective.
O’Connor has succeeded less convincingly with Maz. Towards the end of their shared time—when audience members inured to Pillow Talk–Pretty Woman denouements may be hoping for the metaphorical sound of church bells chiming—Maz takes an action that won’t be described but doesn’t seem nearly prepared for.
Are there autobiographical threads that O’Connor has assumed spectators will get but don’t? Do the results of the plot leap lead at last to a happily-ever-after ending? No answer to that is forthcoming, either—other than to say that when designer Sinéad McKenna’s lights fade, Maz is pondering alone. But for good? That’s another question altogether.
There’s an additionally irksome Maz and Bricks element: the dialogue. Although the potential lovers do plenty of sharp talking to and at each other, they also spend a good deal of time speaking directly through the fourth wall. When they do so, they inexplicably employ rhyming couplets.
Check that. Sometimes they blab in rhyming couplets, but at other times they resort to catch-as-catch can rhymes that reduce some patrons—this one, for example—to listening for the rhyme instead of paying attention to the gist of what’s being said. Maybe just leave it at: Neither Maz nor Bricks are natural-born street-cred poets.
Throughout, O’Connor and O’Brien are charming when the time is right and alienating when that’s called for. If O’Connor is playing a version of herself in any way, she knows how to do it well. O’Brien has the knack of finding the appeal in a lad who should be off-putting but slowly achieves the opposite impression. Nevertheless, they pull off a flawed work as if it were a valentine merrily posted through the mails.
Maz and Bricks opened January 12, 2020, at 59E59 and runs through February 2. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
