Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✩✩✩
by Neil Wechsler, directed by Geoffrey Pounsett
The Room, The Grocery, 1362 Queen St. East, Toronto
November 27-December 14, 2014
“Fascinating Subject, Exasperating Play”
A new theatre company calling itself The Room is presenting the Canadian premiere of The Brown Bull of Cúailnge by American playwright and Buffalo resident Neil Wechsler. The play is inspired by an epic central to Irish mythology, the Táin Bó Cúailnge, known in English as The Cattle Raid of Cooley. Wechsler’s play is interesting in theory but tedious in practice. Wechsler’s repetitive style is the main source of this tedium but so is his deliberate withholding of background information that would make the action clearer.
The play includes a précis of the Táin Bó Cúailnge (pronounced “tahn bo ku-ill-ngeh”). We hear from one of the characters who is a poet that Queen Medb (pronounced “meev”) of Connacht and her husband Ailill were trying to decide who was wealthier. The two were equal in everything except that Medb lacked a bull to match Ailill’s. The only bull in Ireland equal to Ailill’s was the Brown Bull of Cúailnge in Ulster, so Medb and Ailill plan an attack on Ulster, where the 17-year-old Irish hero Cú Chulainn is king. Ailill takes one route to attack Ulster while Medb and exiles from Ulster led by Fergus mac Róich take another path. Fergus and his men are thus caught up in a struggle over possession of a bull that is just as pointless as the struggle in Homer’s Iliad over possession of Helen of Troy.
The characters of the play are Fergus (Dylan Roberts), the boy Muirgen (Gabriella Colavecchio), the mathematician Ath (Antonio Cayonne) and the poet Brug (Anand Rajaram). The four have become separated from their squadron, are now lost and do not know who is winning the battle. The action begins as the four are attempting to get some sleep, though with Muirgen’s constant questions, Brug’s decision to recite his poetry and the arguments that ensue, the continuing pretence that they are trying to sleep becomes ridiculous.
Wechsler establishes stylized patterns of dialogue that he repeats ad nauseam for the 70 minutes of the play. In this pattern a character will make a claim about something Fergus has done, Muirgen will ask Fergus whether it is true and Fergus will deny it. Fergus never confirms any of the rumours that have become attached to him and, indeed, negates any positive statement any of the other three characters make. The pattern is so predictable and therefore so tiresome that eventually audience members behind me began anticipating Fergus’s replies.
The plays iteration of statement followed by contradiction is so rigid that it nearly stifles any sense of drama. Yet, somehow, a change does occur. At the beginning Fergus is clearly the leader of the group and Muirgen is his devoted follower. Muirgen is so devoted that every question he asks Fergus ends in his name (another source of tedium). Nevertheless, Fergus’s unwavering denials of any positive statement the other three make begins to separate him from the others. While the others are looking for some point to the war, Fergus sees none. Fergus’s complete nihilism eventually draws the three together and an important moment occurs when Muirgen asks Fergus a question and for the first time does not end it with Fergus’s name.
Brug and Ath join together because they want the battle to mean something. Muirgen changes allegiance from Fergus to the other two for the same reason. But what precisely causes this turning point is not clear, at least after only a single viewing of the play.
The most bizarre aspect of this play based on mythology is Wechsler’s decision to withhold background information. The other three have a number of questions for Fergus regarding his past, all of which he denies. Wechsler seems to be counting on his audience’s ignorance of Irish mythology so that we will not know whether any of the questions brought up are part of myth or are not. If you do happen to know about Irish mythology, you have to wonder what game Wechsler is playing at.
As it turns out, all of the peculiar details that the other three mention are all part of the stories connected to Fergus mac Róich. Never mentioned in the play is Fergus’s former status as King of Ulster or why he was deposed. He is asked if it is true he is the hero Cú Chulainn’s foster-father, which is true in the stories but which Fergus denies. Wechsler’s version of Fergus also denies that he has been Queen Medb’s lover, that he is noted for his sexual prowess and that he made a wooden sword. He also denies any of the details concerning the bull’s extraordinary size or Cú Chulainn’s superhuman strength. Yet, all these are described in the Táin Bó Cúailnge.
Presumably, Wechsler wants to keep us in the dark about these details so that the others have to decide whether to believe rumour and poetic exaggeration rather than the banal truth. Wechsler shows that people choose to believe myth because it gives their lives meaning. Trading on our presumed ignorance has an unfortunate effect. It means that the majority of the play is taken up with people debating miscellaneous trivia that means absolutely nothing to us since we don’t know how it is connected to the story. Wechsler’s ploy also forces the character Fergus to become extremely annoying in that virtually all he does is to contradict what the others say. Since Wechsler keeps us ignorant, we don’t know why Fergus denies everything so vehemently. Is it because the statements are not true, or is it because Fergus wants to conceal the truth? Keeping Fergus’s motivation inaccessible along with the reasons behind his frequent departures from the stage make the potentially most interesting character the most annoying.
Dylan Roberts, who has the thankless task of playing Fergus, does not make the situation better by starting out his series of denials with such forcefulness he leaves himself nowhere else to go. As Muirgen and Ath, Gabriella Colavecchio and Antonio Cayonne both need to slow down their speech and to articulate more clearly, especially since they use so many Irish proper names. Colavecchio’s Muirgen does seem like an innocent but Wechsler’s forcing Muirgen to echo everything people say is tiresome. Cayonne’s Ath is potentially the figure we can relate to most, but Wechsler undercharacterizes him but giving him only three personal characteristics – a limp, a passion for women and a passion for mathematics. Wechsler also gives us no clue as to how three these go together.
Anand Rajaram’s Brug thus becomes, by comparison, the most fully realized character. Rajaram adds to this, in a way the others don’t, by developing grand gestures for the poet to use to bring out his comic side. His recitation of a portion of the Táin is pleasant in itself as well as providing us some context for the action.
Wechsler seeks universality through vagueness. We don’t know whether the four have been lost for ten days or 10,000 years or if they even exist. When he wrote plays about Irish myth, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) took the far simpler path of having the characters appear as ghosts reenacting the past which has the virtue of avoiding Wechsler’s rather too Beckett-like habit of having his characters discuss the status of their own existence.
In general, The Brown Bull of Cúailnge presents the spectacle of an intellectual playwright outsmarting himself. His stylistic ploys create a work that not only does not let us into the world of Irish myth but also becomes boring long before its 70 minutes are over. In the programme The Room claims that, “It enjoys bucking the odds and falling on its face from great heights”. While one appreciates its daring, let’s hope The Room can buck the odds with more successful results next time.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) Dylan Roberts and Anand Rajaram; Antonio Cayonne and Gabriella Colavecchio. ©2014 Robert Harding.
For tickets, visit www.brownpapertickets.com/event/958652.
2014-12-04
The Brown Bull of Cúailnge