Real life, low life
The Rasherhouse by Alan Roberts
Dublin Fringe Festival
The New Theatre
43 East Essex Street
Dublin
`til 1 November
Tickets: £7/£6 (concessions)
This is an extraordinary play, rich with the raw finish of the
homemade. Written by Alan Roberts and directed by Robert Lane,
The Rasherhouse is about drugs, drugs and drugs. It is so much
about drugs that at times it creeps into the veins of the
audience, seated rigid with terror, closer than they ever want to
get either to a theatre stage or to the dirty reality of a shared
habit.
d then it is about so much more than drugs, as ever with drugs,
and all the `mitigating factors' are there, carefully included in
what amounts to a torrent of abuse heaped on the way things are
for `some' in Ireland today.
The mainliners are primarily three women, imprisoned in a jail
that could only be Mountjoy. The characterisation of Rosie, the
dealer who calls herself `a businesswoman' is so convincing it
leaves you guessing just which real-life low life she is based
on. Mags, the new kid on the block, is so just like the girl next
door it leaves you thinking that if it can happen to her...etc.
Mary, the angel of mercy, deals the dirty needle and the point of
the play - the cycle of death-dealing and confinement from which
there seems no escape. Una Kavanagh is superb in this role, but
none of the other performances can be slighted. The reps of
`normal' society are the screws, self-ridiculed by three fine
performances, and who of course, at the end of the day, are part
of the equality of scumbags the play depicts.
The Rasherhouse is about the sheer redundancy of prisons but it
is also about the confinement of women, and of men, within set
roles. The character Dommo, standing for the hit and miss between
instant love and instant violence in the young urban male, is
brilliantly played by Anthony Fox.
It is Fox who founded the Sionnach Theatre Company which has
produced this play, and it is Fox who established the New
Theatre, which is dedicated to encouraging young talent and to
``plays by Irish authors, focusing on social themes which affect
young people today''.
Director Robert Lane has achieved something remarkable with this
production, and his set design is an immaculate use of the
limited space available.
Hardback chairs and a red gas fire make up the furnishings of the
small backroom theatre that is the New, but the talent that has
assembled there guarantees its future.
The Rasherhouse is on Monday to Saturday until 1 November. It is
heavy going. But go.
By Rita O'Reilly
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