If the observation that history repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce contains a truth, then 'The Walworth Farce' provides a form of confirmation.
Eleven a.m. in a council flat on the Walworth Road, and Dinny (Denis Conway), with his two sons Blake (Garrett Lombard) and Sean (Tadhg Murphy) as co-competitors, is going once more for the Acting Trophy. Their display of obsessive-compulsive behaviour provides the narrative in Enda Walsh's look at Irish history as post-modern farce.
However rigourously revisionist the re-writing of Irish history may have been in past (and present) decades, people, Irish or otherwise, will still prefer to cling to comfortable myth, and like the family of Walsh's play, bar their doors against the intrusive realities of the outside world.
It slowly becomes clear that the story Dinny retells on a daily basis is based in dreadful fact, however cunningly he disguises his own discreditable part. Dinny's strong personality has cowed his two sons into meek collusion and into a dread of what lies beyond their own front door. However, someone has to shop for the six cans of Harp lager, fifteen crackers and spreadable cheese, pink wafer biscuits and oven-ready chicken which make up their daily communion with the dead, and in the course of this Sean strikes up a friendship with Hayley, who follows him back to the flat, thus ensuring that the script will never be the same again.
'The Walworth Farce' is a close cousin to Tom Murphy's play 'Bailliegangaire' where a tale re-told in dementia brings about a reconciliation and a hope for a better future. Walsh offers us no such optimism, and the play ends with Sean as reluctant to leave behind dreadful security as any concentration camp survivor may have been to leave the familiarity of their awful conditions.
Walsh's play is a further attempt to dispel the myths of Irish history and sense of nationality in a world that is rapidly globalising and forgetting identity unless it can become a source of profit. Theatrical conventions of a past age are used as metaphor for the re-packaging of stage Irishry, while Walsh's narrative suggests both how awful the past frequently is and how often and how desperately we attempt to become the heroes of our individual scripts. As well, of course, as how often and how enthusiastically we sabotage our efforts to escape the restrictions of those scripts.
Druid have a deserved reputation for fine theatrical products, and 'The Walworth Farce' has much to commend it. Mikel Murfi's direction has solid but also delicate qualities, and all the cast work hard, both in 'farce' and 'straight' sequences. This is, as one expects from such a company, theatre of a high order.
Times: 3-26 August, various (see Fringe and Traverse programmes)
Copyright Bill Dunlop 2007, published on EdinburghGuide.com, August 2007