It's Always Your Bleedin' Own
Ericka Roe, Lloyd Cooney and Cameron Hogan in TKB's It's Always You Bleedin' Own. Image, Ste Murray
*****
Dublin 1 and its Northside adjacent residents. Little more than animal gangs pulling wheelies on Parnell Street. Or addicts shooting up openly in O’Connell Street next to children. And let’s not forget 2023’s Dublin Riot. Feckless, racist, thieving drug dealers, and that’s just the grandparents. Wouldn’t see that carry on in Ballybrack. The inner city’s response a socialist manifesto claiming disadvantage, deprivation, generational trauma or gentrification. Or romanticised claims at being the heart of Dublin. Salt of the earth Dubliners enjoying a singalong, a good bop, or a night at the bingo. Just like they did in the good old days. Except it’s not the good old days. It’s 2024. Hotels, like bicycle lanes, are cluttering the inner city and the flats are being torn down. Meanwhile a malignant energy is manifesting on what were once safe streets. In It’s Always Your Bleedin’ Own, the final instalment in The St Mary’s Mansions Trilogy, writer TKB (Thomas Kane Byrne) recognises all of the above yet insists it’s not the whole story.
Cameron Hogan in TKB's It's Always You Bleedin' Own. Image, Ste Murray
Trilogy fans familiar with Well That’s What I Heard and Say Nothin’ To No One, will find themselves only marginally better informed than those here for the first time. Action capable of standing alone, for the most part, as serial cheater Darren admits he’s having an affair with Amber Leaf Green no less. She of the Juicy Couture tracksuit, soon to be wed to Mick from the RA. A coffin dodger who can provide Amber with the respect and security she needs. But what she needs most is a bespoke wedding dress to stun her WhatsApp detractors. And who better than former neighbour, London based designer Cian Richards, to make it for her. A wannabe fashionista already looking like a has been; Cian is riddled with panic attacks, familial guilt, and third degree imposter syndrome following a failed collection. Reluctantly agreeing to help Amber in the hope of reclaiming his mojo, he returns to a vastly changed Dublin. Whisking up a whirlwind of jealousies, desires, drug fuelled bops and late night swims. Only for all three to arrive back where they started. But maybe now they’ll be able to say a proper hello, or goodbye.
Lloyd Cooney and Ericka Roe in TKB's It's Always You Bleedin' Own. Image, Ste Murray
Despite sporting three incredible performances, not everything works as well as it might. Name associations overplay their hand and a machine gun spraying of lines means some humour flies overhead and misses its target. Then there’s an unforgivably lazy twist at the end that’s uncharacteristically poor. Yet while not perfect, it’s still rather brilliant, especially the manner of its telling. More character study than story; language, like fashion, denotes a performance of protest. Rhyming street slang, shared catchphrases, name associations, accents, rhythms and rhymes all facilitate a shared shorthand that refuses to endorse the status quo. Offering a shower of verbal fireworks in which insults rain down like sparks. A refusal mapped onto the body where authenticity and integrity are defined by the vagaries of fashion and pop culture conversations. Each character a physical, social, and artistic body strutting defiantly through life like it’s their personal runaway. Ellen Kirk’s catwalk set and fashion week costumes vibrantly defiant and expressive. Eoin Byrne’s lights and Lara Gallagher’s sound adding warmth, texture and energy. Ronan Phelan’s superb direction queering the pitch without lazily resorting to kitsch. Ensuring Lloyd Cooney’s tracksuit dim Darren, Cameron Hogan’s swaggering Cian, and Ericka Row’s inimitable Amber are each superb setting their collective catwalk alight. Bopping, swimming, shagging behind screens or heaving with anxiety; it hits like an assault on the senses and sensibilities. Meanwhile Kirk’s ever present scaffold silently evokes the once upon a time of the flats, along with their current demise.
Ericka Roe in TKB's It's Always You Bleedin' Own. Image, Ste Murray
As stories go, Dublin’s inner city has been here before. Its people trapped between an uncomfortable past and an uncertain future. For Cian, Darren and Amber, that past lives in memories of the Q Bar. For an older generation it was previously known as The Harp. TKB’s dynamic trio might lament the demise of the flats, for his Nan and her generation it would have been the tenements. It’s a new spin on an old story infused with restless energy by Cooney, Hogan and Roe, each playing several characters. Most notably, there’s the divine Ms. Amber Green. With Amber Green TKB has given us a Molly Bloom for Millennials and Gen Z. A fiery, feisty, morally ambiguous Dublin woman with a quick wit, vicious tongue, and wild passions. Amber brought definitively to life by a superlative Ericka Roe in a career defining performance. And if you’ve seen Roe in Say Nothin’ To No One, that’s saying something. Roe has never been better. Nor, for that matter, has TKB. Demanding to be heard rather than read, boasting three excellent performances, all exquisitely directed in cracking, meta-theatrical fashion, It’s Always Your Bleedin’ Own deserves to be in contention for best new play of 2024. Gerrup Helen, whoever you are, and get yourself a ticket.
It’s Always Your Bleedin’ Own by TKB, presented by Breadline in association with Project Arts Centre, runs at The Project Arts Centre until December 14.
For more information visit Project Arts Centre
