The New Electric Ballroom
Following up their presentation of Walsh’s The Walworth Farce, Druid Ireland concluded UCLA Live’s International Theatre Festival with a play by the same quirky writer (and this time, director) that explodes another Irish family unit, but in a completely different way. No farce, this. Walsh serves up what may be considered an odd version of Three Sisters. His family consists of two elderly women – Clara (Ruth McCabe), Breda (Rosaleen Linahan) –- with their younger sister, Ada (Catherine Walsh), still holding down her job at the town cannery.
Walsh excels at extended monologues that simultaneously reveal and obscure the psyches of his characters. Here, the women are discovered playing a familiar game as they take turns regaling each other with the tale of a timorous sexual encounter, when they were young women, outside The New Electric Ballroom. Their purpose is meant to assuage Ada’s still potent desire to experience the world and specifically, men.
As the stories unfold, the women change from their plain clothing into replicas of their once-glorious dance dresses. They are continually interrupted by Patsy (Mikel Murfi), a fishmonger who mixes his fish deliveries with town gossip. His attraction to their family focuses on Ada. In one fantastic sequence, Patsy transforms from a homely and beaten man to glittering rock star. The air crackles with the possibility of love until Patsy begins recounting how their love will go, and subsequently talks himself (and Ada, too) out of it.
The beauty of Walsh’s language might be savored but for the speed at which each long speech runs. At one hour and 15 minutes, there is no time to relish the peculiar family ritual that comprises the plot. His cast is up to the task, rattling off their speeches with break-neck precision. Walsh’s eccentric direction forces us to experience the stories of fleeting youth and the evanescence – the despair – of unrealized love with breathless attention.
Purposely exploding the stereotypical, Walsh is aided in his endeavor by an industrial set design and peculiar costumes designed by Sabine Dargent with otherworldly lighting by Sinéad McKenna. The fantasy sequence gets a boost from sound designer Gregory Clarke, who also fills in the “foley” for each of the women’s reminiscences of youth. The result is mysterious, engrossing and unsettling, all at once.
Photo of Catherine Walsh by Keith Pattison
The New Electric Ballroom. concluded UCLA Live’s Eighth International Theatre Festival at the Freud Playhouse on the UCLA Campus in Westwood. It performed December 2 through 6, 2009. For information on UCLA Live offerings in 2010 phone (310) 825-2101 or www.UCLAlive.org.