Not Now by David Ireland
The MAC, Belfast
Playwright David Ireland is one of the sui generis gang, a total one-off and brilliant. I’ll never forget reviewing Cyprus Avenue at The MAC in 2018. Seeing Stephen Rea as the main character, Eric, cuddling his granddaughter whom he fantasises is the reincarnation of Gerry Adams was something you don’t forget, or want to.
Bleak, funny in the Northern Irish manner and revealing of a terrible sectarian divide. As Simon Magill said, Mr Rea has the best philtrum or upper lip crease in the business that can express anything.
Ireland was also responsible for Sadie, the televised play that the Lyric Theatre got on BBC Four during lockdown. This was a reworked older piece but intense and in passages very moving about sectarian legacy and a Troubles family.
Fast forward to David Ireland’s latest, slighter play, Not Now, part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. It’s a 50-minute two-hander with some great moments between Uncle Ray and would-be actor nephew Matthew.
It takes chutzpah to start a drama with a long quote from William Shakespeare, but Ireland does just that, starting us off with Matthew doing a superb, borderline lunatic version of the start of Richard III.
He seems to air guitar into the king’s disability. You know the lines: "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York…" and so on.
The young man (Matthew Blaney, dramatically a 10) is preparing his audition – or interview as his uncle says – for RADA. Or 'Radar', as painter-decorator uncle Ray names it. So far, so class comedy.
Or tragedy – will Matthew really go to London and his potentially brilliant career or chicken out?
He should really be rehearsing Hamlet as he’s just lost his father and the grief is at times palpable.
Then comes the big secret, or rather two. Matthew discovers something violent about his father’s past, including a prison sentence. Then we segue into a sequence about love, gayness, family disapproval worthy of one of the mid-20th century American dramatists.
But the funny lines are pure Belfast. Uncle Ray, superbly portrayed by Stephen Kennedy but never 50, delivers the stuff so well. His confusion over names leads to a lovely moment when he confuses George Michael with George Clooney – "He wasn’t gay?" It’s also interesting Uncle Ray seems comfortable with his Irish identity in a way his nephew isn’t.
His nephew is very angry although not quite Jimmy Porter. This is a breakfast table rather than a kitchen sink drama and well directed by Max Elton. Maybe one misses the total weirdness of vintage Ireland but it is raw emotionally. And yes, memorable, as Matthew finally delivers the Richard III speech in his own, regained Northern Irish accent.
Not Now continues tonight (Friday May 5) at The MAC
