It’s always a relief when a new play attempts to save its reviewers as much effort as possible. At one point in Enda Walsh’s Medicine, a character remarks about the script, “The language is a little inflated.” Later, another points out, “I looked ahead in the script and there’s nothing of any great consequence for the next four or five pages.”
Add that there’s nothing of any great consequence for the rest of the pages as well, and this critic’s work is done.
You may be asking, why are the characters in a play commenting on its content? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t very satisfying. The conceit of this new effort from Irish playwright Walsh, receiving its American premiere at St. Ann’s Warehouse, is that a pajama-clad man, John Kane (Domhnall Gleeson), is confined to a mental institution and apparently undergoing an examination of his life and the circumstances that brought him there.
That examination takes the form of a theatrical performance enacted by two female performers, both named Mary (Aoife Duffin, Clare Barrett), who are accompanied by a drummer (Sean Carpio) providing a running percussive background. Kane himself takes part in the drama therapy proceedings which feature unseen voices playing the roles of various figures in his life. It takes place in a large recreation room or gym that has clearly been the recent site of some sort of revelry, as evidence by the many balloons festooned throughout and the large “Congratulations!” banner overhead. Periodically throughout, Kane retreats to the safety of a tiny cubicle ringed by curtains.
How much you’ll get out of all this depends largely on your appetite for theatrical absurdism and whether or not you find the sight of a woman in a giant lobster costume playing tetherball particularly funny. As John attempts to recount the life events that brought him to his present situation, prompted by questions from an unseen interviewer, the two Marys indulge in such antics as dancing to disco music, lip-synching to vintage pop songs, being buffeted by mysterious gale force winds, swigging energy drinks, and occasionally squabbling about each other’s performances. One of them frequently takes the opportunity to attempt to improve Kane’s story for dramatic effect.
Describing himself as a “tall ginger man,” Kane repeatedly explains to the interviewer that the decision about his being confined to the facility was made by “my parents and a doctor in my town.” Through episodes recounted by him and acted out in various fashions, we learn that his parents were unloving and neglectful; that he was bullied by other children, who at one point made him wear a dress and walk several miles home; that he spied on a neighbor girl as she undressed in her bedroom; and that he watched his mother play the role of Mary Magdalene in a church theatrical.
Despite the strenuous clowning of Duffin and Barrett, the two Marys’ antics are tiresome to the extreme, and the incidents from Kane’s past are depicted in such cursory fashion that they make little dramatic impact. Walsh, who also directed the production, has previously trafficked in this sort of theatrical absurdism in such works as Disco Pigs, The Walworth Farce and others (he’s also done more mainstream efforts like Once and Lazarus), and he certainly has his fans. But this effort, partially inspired by controversies about Ireland’s mental health care system, doesn’t illuminate its subject so much as trivialize it.
It’s only the deeply touching performance by Gleeson that brings some much-needed humanity to the evening. The actor, a veteran of not one but two mega-film franchises (Harry Potter and Star Wars), here creates such a pathetic, vulnerable figure that your heart goes out to him. Not only for the suffering he’s endured in the past, but also for the theatrical hell in which he’s currently trapped.
