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This is a deathbed play. That Gabriel is close
to death is evident from Conrad's opening-scene interview with the prospective
nurse, Alma. It's by no means just about the Gabriel-Conrad relationship;
Gabriel's sister Kassie and nephew Ryan are both vivid personalities here, and
Alma's relationship with Gabriel - nurse and patient, toughie and toughie,
sharing past lives, he, while dying, helping to cure her - becomes the most
complex element in the play.
McGuinness sometimes sketches in important plot
elements too briskly: at the end, I could not have passed an examination about
Alma's past or Kassie's husband as well as I would have liked. But we can't
miss the gist: the larger emotions that transcend specific
events.
The play's humour is never long absent, least
of all from the continual in-fighting between Gabriel and Conrad. Gabriel,
grandly: "Has there ever been a man I hated more than you?" Conrad,
coolly: "Your wigmaker?" It's perfectly timed: we had been wondering
about Gabriel's coiffure. Camp remarks - about climbing the Matterhorn in high
heels, for example - abound, and so does a tougher vein of humour. I find many
deathbed scenes perfectly resistable, but this deathbed play enthralled me, not
least because it showed so many attitudes to death, and not only to Gabriel's
approaching death. Gabriel himself runs quite a gamut of feeling about it, but
his final scene with Conrad, original, theatrical and fantasy-seeking to the
last, is tenderness itself.
All five roles are gifts to actors, and, as
directed by Patrick Mason, all five rise beautifully to their challenge.
Richard Johnson, who can be too low-key and tepid, plays Conrad with nicely
judged gravity; James Kennedy's anger and vulnerability as Ryan are very
telling; Donna Dent's blend of hardness and softness, of feeling and
feistiness, are perfect for Alma. Rosaleen Linehan, an actor of whom I can't
see enough, makes Kassie as memorable and fantastic as her brother Gabriel.
Alan Howard, as actorly an actor as we have today, finds in Gabriel a perfect
vehicle for his sometimes baroque flights of vocal technique; his large
imagination and wry humour are never in doubt for a moment. Joe Vanek's designs
are exquisite. This is one of McGuinness's finest plays. Curiously, though his
ear for both English and Irish voices is pitch-perfect here, he often here
reminds me of Tennessee Williams, one of the modern playwrights I love most:
the characters' need of fantasy, their dangerous humour, their lyrical
recollections of past experience. There is something gorgeous about
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