Home, Boys Home

Ray Yeates, Fionnuala Gagyx and Donna Anita Nikolaisen in Home, Boys Home. Image by Ste Murray.

**

On the evidence of Dermot Bolger’s Home, Boys Home, the 80s and 90’s didn’t age so well. A fact embodied by Shane, a sixty three year old Bohemians supporter who thinks he’s still got it when it comes to the ladies. When all he’s really got is a failed marriage, a career cut short and a life in Holland that went down the toilet. Shane doing what he always does, running away to where he hopes things will be better. Why he runs to high rent, gangland Dublin beggars belief, but back he comes looking for home only to find a new normal. The third in Bolger’s trilogy about the Irish diaspora and Irish international football, Home, Boys Home’s meditations on a changing Ireland sees Bolger’s trilogy end on a whimper. In which Ireland remains as it was, in the beginning, is now, and, with little to suggest otherwise, most likely ever shall be.

Showing hints of the vastly superior Looking for Eric, there’s a half decent story here trying to find its feet. One whose irregular injections of tension and humour sustains interest. Shane, discovering a daughter and a black grandson he never knew he had, the latter with the prospect of an international football career, finds himself facing down an old acquaintance, now a gangland figure, to strike a deal that will free his grandson of a debt. Underdeveloped, relying on working class cliches and making for contrived narrative asks, story buckles beneath an excess of exposition, unnecessary backstory and wordy details. Information an actor might use to create a character but which the audience doesn’t need to know. Slowing everything down to facilitate a plethora of Reeling In The Years styled soundbites whilst also ensuring the only voice we ever truly hear is Bolger’s. Indeed, even when Shane is speaking dialogue, it still feels like Bolger delivering a monologue.

Under Raymond Keane’s direction several moments achieve visual poetry, as when Shane’s daughter stalks him like a femme fatale in a film noir movie. But it’s hard to make longwinded, belated backstory interesting, and humorous interludes aren’t enough. At its best, Home, Boys Home establishes a link between gay bashing in the 80s and racism today. Mostly, its trips down memory lane prove too old for nostalgia and too young for history. Like a derelict building somewhere between still habitable and ready to be torn down. Reflected in performances which, if bright on occasion, look generally uneasy. Ray Yeates’s one tone Shane being so laid back he’s practically horizontal. Which plays well at times, but not in significant moments. Fionnuala Gygax looking stiff and strained as Lisa plays to the Handbook For Generic Abandoned Daughters. Only Donna Anita Nikolaisen shines consistently as Lisa's caring friend. Looking less convincing, along with Gygax, as a gangland menace. Both providing cringemaking, cartoon caricatures that crossover into embarrassing.

In Home, Boys Home, Ireland aspired to great things, flourished for a time then became multicultural. Only to end up a lonely, old has been who never really was; out of touch and out of time. Home, Boys Home another version of the almost great Irish success story. Regurgitating the Obama delusion that our best days are still ahead of us, like they supposedly were for Shane in the 80s. Espousing family is still everything, even though it never was, with more and more young people not wanting to have families. That thriving, gangland criminals are old friends who can be reasoned with. That a shared sense of Irishness lies in memories of football and hopes for its future, even as rugby is where contemporary collective connectedness converges these days. The country’s way forward to replay the same old tune remixed, hoping of a different outcome. Fool me once, as they say. As the embodiment of the past forty years, Shane arguably hits the nail on the head. Speaking to the next forty, his hopes might be sincere, but it looks like wishful thinking. Irish art owes Dermot Bolger a huge debt of gratitude for his immeasurable contribution over many decades. Yet in this instance, when compared to the works of Tom Murphy on the Irish diaspora, or Bolger’s own earlier plays, Home, Boys Home speaks to a sentimental sugar rush rather than the challenges facing a modern Ireland.

Home, Boys Home by Dermot Bolger, runs at The Viking Theatre until October 26.

For more information visit The Viking Theatre