The Gown Student Newspaper at Queen's University Belfast

REVIEW: Vincent River

With the Belfast Pride festival coming to a close, Philip Ridley’s Vincent River, a dark play of loss and acceptance, provided a more than suitable ending to the festival’s twentieth birthday celebrations.  Gracing the stage of the Crescent Arts Centre the depiction of a mother’s grief over the hate-crime committed against her homosexual son, combined with a tormented teenage boy’s search for his true sexual identity, was intense, thought-provoking and unapologetically raw.

BY WENDY BROWNE

Darkness. Pitch-black, all-consuming darkness fills the theatre and disorientates the audience. Then light, and both Anita (Eleanor Methven) and Davey (Kerr Logan) appear, as if by magic, at the edge of the dingy scene. A bleak, unfurnished Bethnal Green flat unveils itself on stage, a refuge for Anita, fleeing the prejudices of her former community. Dark green gin bottles, sources of future solace, are prominent on the counter’s edge. Then at once the audience is plunged into an intense ninety minute dialogue, at first hesitant and a little awkward, but which crescendos into fine moments of heart-wrenching emotional outpourings from both characters struggling to come to terms with Vincent’s tragic demise.

The questions begin in earnest for both Anita and the audience; who is this strange and beaten boy? Why is he following her?  And what is he hiding? At once a verbal fencing match commences between two people wracked by guilt and guarding still-bleeding wounds, inflicted as much by a bigoted society as by themselves. There is a mutual need for each other, the two drawn together almost telepathically, inevitably by a burning desire for redemption. Questions turn to answers, and yet more questions, as stories steadily outpour like the sloshing of the gin into Anita’s china tea cups. Social stigmas, not only regarding homosexuality, are broached in these tender moments of vulnerability; Anita’s banishment from her community, even from her own family, for an adulterous affair, and Davey’s struggle with his terminally ill mother and an emotionally unavailable father are deftly teased out.

Unexpected, dark humour flecked the melancholy performance, where sometimes sympathetic, sometimes even a little awkward laughter flowed wave-like across the unsuspecting audience. Seventeen year old Davey’s initial refusal to drink was met by Anita with stark realism; “You do now,” she stated bluntly, thrusting the bottle into his hands. It is this harshly prosaic sentiment that saturates this entirely unpretentious, unassuming play; grief hurts, life’s hard and you just have to get through it some way, somehow and preferably with someone. Alcohol, reminiscence and most of all laughter are clearly what Ridley views as the keys to this process.

Lyrical dialogue washed over the audience, permeated with beautiful motifs. Snow fell softly over the play, as a metaphor perhaps for Vince’s innocence, sacrificed unfairly for his sexuality. These metaphors jar with Anita’s searingly painful outbursts. Words become obsolete as she bellows heart-felt sobs that resonate throughout the theatre, demanding empathy from a similarly emotionally drained audience. Much like the roller coaster of Davey’s familial reminiscence, the audience unavoidably partakes in the journey, wrenching from Davey’s drug addled turmoil, to Anita’s stubborn self denial, climaxing in a quasi-oedipal sexual catharsis between the troubled couple.

What Sophie Motley’s interpretation lacked in dramatic action, indeed the entire performance took place in one intense evening, in one run-down flat, the piece made up for in emotional rawness. Like the glass ground into Vincent’s eyes, like the salt rubbed into these emotional wounds, the play acts as a visually painful reminder to its twenty first century audience that little, arguably, has changed. Indeed, no real anger appears to be directed at the perpetrators of the brutal murder. Rather, the play does more for the audience by focusing on humankind’s need to accept, to understand, and to cope. As the curtain falls few issues are resolved, offering only the qualified comfort of mutual empathy.

Although a rather demanding performance, ninety minutes of straight dialogue without intermission, this emotionally and physically dark play was juxtaposed poignantly with the ostentatiousness of the Belfast Pride Parade. Despite all the glitz and the glamour, homophobia is shown by the play to remain a blight that festers in a seemingly accepting society. It was raw, it was heartfelt, and, most importantly, it was real.

Tags: Crescent Arts Centre, Gay Pride belfast 2010, Gown, newspaper, Queen's, queen's university, student, students, The Gown, Vincent River, Wendy Browne

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Arts + Ents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.