The Last Man in Ireland

Dan Monaghan and Ian Bermingham in The Last Man in. Ireland. Image uncredited

***

Try explaining a Monty Python sketch. It’s tricky. The description never quite living up to the comic experience. Their unique brand of surreal, absurdist comedy operating on a variety of levels. Similarly Keith James Walker’s off the wall The Last Man in Ireland. Ostensibly a comedy about three brothers, one living in the last house in Ireland. The Emerald Isle reduced to small patch of land following rising sea levels. The blurb claims it’s about grief and family dysfunction. In truth it’s about Irish dysfunction. Equally akin to satire as surrealism, more akin to Halls Pictorial Weekly than Python, and less akin to a play so much as an overplayed sketch. Its cultural grab bag of Irish cliches rode roughshod over. Puncturing the sacred and profane references historically used to define Irish identity. Did I mention it’s often hilariously funny?

Often, but not consistently. Like an over extended sketch it lacks sufficient variety to sustain it. The brothers arguing whether to sell the house a device around which Walker litters jokes and insights of various strengths. Some wonderfully smart, some generating a snigger, some a smile, some missing their mark. The best usually over the top and accompanied by impeccable comic physicality. Dan Monaghan’s Michael, an introvert poet who can’t write poems, Ian Bermingham’s Barry, an extrovert, self obsessed actor whose career lies Stateside, and Barry McKiernan as gombeen brother Gerry, who’s a…gombeen, each give superb comic performances of popular Irish stereotypes in a land riddled with cliches. Unrequited love, the drunken Daddy and devoted Mammy, hints of Englishness, promises to keep the family home, the curse of tourism, our tendency to soothe the present with the past, or with whisky; the list goes on.

Barry McKiernan  in The Last Man in. Ireland. Image uncredited

Assured direction by Ian Toner unleashes many comic treasures. Toner capably distinguishing between when a scene needs to go over the top or be restrained. Ensuring the most crazy scenes are played with the serious intensity of a Mamet play rather than for easy laughs, making them all the funnier. Utilising Monaghan as the grounding straight man to Bermingham and McKiernan’s excessive overacting magnifies the play's comic antics. Yet along with its quirky humour there’s a datedness that tempers everything. In a post banking crisis, multicultural Ireland, the country’s accelerated rate of change means that many of Walker’s references look old school. Reinforced by a workmanlike set of retro cottage fittings, right down to a typewriter and luggage case. Still, its comic performances and hilarious antics are well worth the price of admission, today or any day.

The Last Man in Ireland by Keith James Walker, presented by Modest Odyssey, runs at Smock Alley Theatre until April 19.

For more information visit Smock Alley Theatre