Ivy

Helen McGrath in Ivy. Image, Dominik Turkowski

**

You can only but admire performers with the gumption to write and perform their own work. Even when that work doesn’t quite come together, as is the case with Helen McGrath’s hugely ambitious Ivy. A labour of love, love blinds in this troubled production in which an eager to please mother of two, in some kind of accommodation, relays the details from her married past and her new day to day living. A woman previously subjected to emotional and psychological abuse from a controlling husband who spends her day rearranging the debris of her life dressed in pyjamas. The rearranging of Dylan McGloin’s cleverly symmetrically boxes hinting of ritual, or OCD.

Structurally, and dramatically, nothing much happens till the final moment which serves up a bittersweet catharsis. Instead, we listen to vague, ditzy ramblings as the real and imagined become clearly delineated. Ivy’s daily ritual ultimately ineffective. Her good girl, self talk sounding monotone, not telling us quite what Ivy might think it does. Problems compounded by the play’s premise. While many women leave their homes due to domestic abuse, those with even a cursory acquaintance with family law would take serious exception with McGrath’s premise of a woman forcibly removed from the family home and denied custody solely on the unfounded lies of her husband. But, like many things in Ivy, it’s never properly explained, just hinted at. Like it’s obvious when it isn’t. The work looking half done, offering less a story, or ritual, so much as a litany of distracting descriptions, bland observations and heavy handed metaphors. With butter topping the metaphor list. Resulting in confusion and obscurity rather than mystery. An invested performance not enough to fill in the blanks in Ivy’s unimaginative imagination.

When it comes to McGrath’s writer-performer divide, there’s less a yin yang balance so much as each side vying for dominance. McGrath’s literary aspirations winning out to the point Ivy feels less like a play so much as a novel. So dominant is the writer’s presence it’s rarely Ivy’s voice we hear but the author’s. Overwrought prose sentences, long descriptive passages that meander aimlessly, and a host of golden literary allusions, Ivy screams to be read. As if written for the mind’s eye and not the spectator.

Something director Esosa Ighodaro fails to address. Ighodaro’s physical approach imposing on proceedings, sometimes to effect as in a clever opening image. Given Ois O’Donoghue is listed as movement director, Ighodaro’s direction soon looks like misdirection. As if trying to distract rather than unpack. As McGrath delivers an energised, if occasionally strained performance, Ighodaro fails to unpack character, or text, to the level it needed. Relying instead on weak physical images and heavy pacing that occasionally catches the eye but offers little by way of depth or impact. Not doing enough to bring this mental health ritual together.

A brave, risk taking performer who can light up a stage, McGrath isn’t quite there yet as a playwright. Like Ivy, McGrath’s script has a lot of baggage that weighs it down. A character study of a character not fully developed, speaking to experiences half illustrated and a system, and story, we don’t fully understand, Ivy’s absurd heart might be in the right place, but its ritualistic head is all over the place. Still, there’s evident promise, from both Ighodaro and McGrath, suggesting watch this space.

Ivy, written and performed by Helen McGrath, directed by Esosa Ighodaro, runs at The New Theatre until March 29.

For more information visit The New Theatre