At the Torch |
| The Torch Theatre- A Prayer for Wings , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , February 28, 2001 |
| In Torch Theatre's revival of Sean Matthias' A Prayer for Wings, which was presented at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre on 28th February, wheelchair-bound Mam asks: "I could fall. I could cry for help. Who'd listen? Who'd hear?" She is provoked to ask this because her 20-year old daughter and caretaker, Rita, doesn't always come downstairs immediately when Mam needs to get out of bed in the morning, and every morning of the last three days Rita has come downstairs later and later. But, living in a derelict church, Mam may be asking this question of God. She could be asking it of the terrace where she lives, or the town, where there is a 28% unemployment rate and her daughter has some prostitution clients but no friends. In the end it doesn't matter to whom Mam addresses her questions, or her prayers. She never hears any answers. Many of the factors which have landed Mam and Rita in this incapacitating, almost unlivable situation come from outside the church-home which fills the Arts Centre's stage from the corners of the floor to the top of the proscenium, but those factors are made obvious if not necessarily visible. The social stigmatisation of single mothers like Mam, the absence of reasonably accessible health care in some places away from the large cities, unemployment, and the church and society's attitudes towards gender roles, families, and sex constitute a large part of the problem; Matthias demonstrates this without sounding too didactic. The playwright received a lot of assistance in conveying these observations by set designer James Humphreys. The church windows are filled in not with glass, but with sections of gilded chain-link fence, suggesting that the church is built inside a prison or a chicken coop. In the "kitchen," dishes are piled up for washing in the baptismal font. The white-and-pink cylindrical structure that towers one story above the floor and serves as Rita's bedroom suggests a nightmarishly large wedding cake. Wedged between a pillar and a pile of clutter next to Mam's bed is a jigsaw-puzzle box labeled "100 Pieces": Humphreys dares Matthias' characters to put the fragments of their lives back together again. A Play for Wings offers two adept actresses a pair of good lead roles. In light of the recent debate over the three-man play Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco, it's good to see a play told from the point of view of two women. Having said that, I realise that these women's roles were written by a male playwright. There are a lot of playwrights (Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and Wendy Wasserstein come to my mind) who appear terrified of or unable to write convincing, multi-dimensional characters of the opposite gender. I would like to see more new plays by women in the future, but no playwright should feel under pressure to write protagonists of her or his own gender. After all, half the fun of dramatic writing is mentally "taking a walk," to quote the American novelist Harper Lee, "in someone else's shoes." I'm glad Matthias decided to attempt that. As Rita, Catrin Rhys was very convincing. She is Clov to Mam's Hamm. She is practically Mam's slave, except she has the ability to leave-only she won't, she can't. If she were to leave, Mam would die, and although she fantasises about killing her, Desdemona-style with a pillow, Rita has a little ethics and love, even if neither she nor Mam will say so out loud. Rhys plays out that struggle fitfully, agonisingly, and naturally. She flings herself awake each morning of each nightmarish day the play ploughs through with a strange combination of exhaustion and firecracker energy. In the opinion of more than one Aberystwyth spectator, Mam, as played by Helen Griffin (who played the beleaguered mother-in-law in Steel Wasp's "The Suicide") steals sympathy from her daughter. Griffin's Mam has strong desires, strong objectives, and isn't afraid-at least in soliloquy-to express them. This is particularly evident in the scene in which one of the boys follows Rita up the ladder to her room as Mam spins her wheels at the bottom and rages. She knows she won't propel herself up the ladder in her chair, but one can tell she is trying to. However, Mathias' script does drag a bit, and if the first half of the first act could be cut down substantially it would help the play as a whole. In the first act, a pattern is established: in the second, it is torn apart, so it makes sense that the second act seems to move in ways the first does not. It's understandably difficult for a playwright to show a tedious, unchanging experience, and to subject the audience to that tedium and repetition without making the play itself slow down to near-stagnation. There's a balance to be struck here, but some editing may be necessary to find it. In their one conversation about Rita's father, Mam tells her daughter that the man's name was Pat Kelly, he was Irish, he was undependable, and he liked "whisky and blondes, in that order." Perhaps this is demonstrating Mam's own limited and limiting view of this person; but one feels cheated, knowing nothing about him than that he conforms to an overused stereotype of his nationality. I don't think it's a bad thing to have characters think in stereotypes-sadly that's a reflection of the way many real people think-but if this is the intention, the issue shouldn't simply be abandoned after one short exchange. Matthias discusses his character's physical characteristics when he perhaps shouldn't. It makes no sense for Mam to claim that Kelly preferred "a blonde" to her when Griffin herself has light-coloured hair. Rita continually describes herself as "short, fat, and plain" but Rhys is none of these. Lastly, I have to say I don't like the title. The monologue it refers to simply echoes ideas that have already been expressed, laboriously. The title sounds like the title of a t.v. movie. It seems generic and it sounds pompous. In a review of "A Prayer for Wings" previously published at this website, David Adams wrote: "The play, and this production, make us not only depressed (despite the ambiguous ending) but uncomfortable. We need clear through-lines, some sort of guidance on whose side we should be on, some sort of answer, a light at the end of the tunnel, and we don't get any of this in a postmodernish lack of certainty. The sex scenes, where Rita dispassionately masturbates her adolescent clients and so unwittingly ensures that with their premature ejaculation she never does lose her virginity are distressing and not just because of the sexual acts." I don't know if we really do need "clear through-lines" or to be told "whose side we should be on." We need plays that make the spectators feel "uncomfortable." We need bleak and depressing and distressing events in the theatre because regrettably real life is sometimes bleak, depressing, and distressing, without a clearly focused light at the end of the tunnel. Go see this play. Despite the few details that need ironing out, it's designed, built, and acted painfully well. |
Reviewed by: Rebecca Nesvett |
This review has been read 3903 times There are 81 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:
|
