The Abbey’s revisiting of Marina Carr’s 1990s coruscating work continued apace with a revival of Portia Coughlan starring Denise Gough.
Portia Coughlan is turning 30. But she has no intention of marking the day with any semblance of positivity, instead drinking hard liquor alone as soon as the kids have gone to school, as her husband Raphael (Marty Rea) discovers to his horror when he unexpectedly returns. Despite the best attempts of her friend Stacia (Imogen Doel) and aunt Maggie May (Anna Healy) to cheer her up, and her own fumbled affairs with local likely lads such as Damus (Fionn O’Loingsigh) and Fintan (Jamie Beamish), the day is hollowed out for her by the absence of her twin brother Gabriel; who drowned himself in the local river exactly fifteen years earlier on their 15th birthday. And the horror of that long ago day will be lived all over again this endless day, and then explained, thanks to Carr’s curious structure.
The opening line of the play signals that extreme abrasiveness is about to follow. And the seminal influence of Pulp Fiction on mid-1990s culture is plain to see in the death of Portia, in what seems an incredibly bold stroke; only for the clock to rewind and she lives again, but only as we follow her up to that point of no return. Carr once again invests the Midlands of Ireland with all the sexual depravity and ritual horror of the Ancient Greek myths. Once again though the lack of an interval here seems less a means of sustaining tension and more an affectation, as an obvious curtain is played through. Caroline Byrne, however, directs with both a keen eye for pace and balance between black comedy and harrowing drama, as we learn why grandmother Blaize (Barbara Brennan) hates Portia.
The original Peacock production’s Portia, Derbhle Crotty, now plays Portia’s cold mother Marianne, while Liam Carney plays her father Sly. They add distinct gravitas to the devastating secrets that Carr’s script reveals, after we know the ending. Chiara Stephenson’s extraordinary set design is like a living room found between brutalist concrete struts of the Barbican complex, with odd domestic touches sliding forth when called for. The entire edifice can become halfway between a Greek temple and a steep hillside when the water-filled trench at the front of the stage transforms into the Belmont river which has such a lethal fascination for Portia while Jack Phelan’s video footage of water and the ghostly memory of Gabriel is projected above the stage, and Mel Mercier’s sound design and Paul Keogan’s lighting bring us into a frantic nighttime search for the missing Portia.
This is a revival of the very first order, and if Carr’s 1998 play By the Bog of Cats becomes too repetitious in reaching its piercing finale, this 1996 work is lean and tricksy.
4/5
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