Stallerhof Reviews
July 23, 2008
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| BRAVE NEW COMPANYStallerhof at the Granary TheatreThis kind of theatre is often filed under ‘brave and uncomprimising.’ From Tragic Eyes Theatre Company, a new company emerging from the Granary Theatre, ‘Stallerhof’ details the miserable life of a girl greeted with contempt by her parents. A sexual relationship develops between the girl, convincingly played by Roisin O Donovan, and an older man. The scenes in this translation of Franz Xaver Kroetz’s original play are extremely short and Lyndel Dowd’s suitably unhurried directionallows the play to breath while the audience is given a chance to reflect and react to the unfolding of the uncomfortable drama. The strength of the piece is in the absence of hysteria, and is all the more effective for not having an obvious moral commentary. The effect of events on the characters is barbaric but the script is too intelligent for any of the characters to fly out of scale – instead they remain worryingly human. For instance, Cormac Costello and Paula McGlinchy seem to have wandered from the pages of Maupassant for their utter mean-spiritedness but there is still a humanity to them, even if it i hard and unforgiving. Also, in terms of design and production values this is a work – and a company – worth taking seriously. Liam Heylin |
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