Denouement
Lyric Theatre, Belfast
★★★☆☆
“Do you really have to finish that now?” a woman asks her husband, who is working at a typewriter too obsessively to take notice. It’s bad enough that Liam, a writer frustrated after several setbacks, is choosing to spend their 29th wedding anniversary ignoring her in order to finish a long-gestating memoir.
Within the apocalypse of Denouement, John Morton’s dark comedy for the Lyric Theatre, where heavy artillery roars overhead and surrounding roads fill with smoke, there appear to be more pressing concerns than a book project.
At first glance this long-married couple living in rural Northern Ireland during a dystopian future may seem uneventful in their middle age. Against shelves of monitors displaying radiation levels and security schematics, they float around their cottage in cardigans, listening to country music.
But when Liam (played by Patrick O’Kane) investigates a van exploded outside their door, and returns with a salvaged brick of cocaine, they no longer seem so quiet. “Yabba dabba doo! We’ll finish it good!” he says, taking a bump. “Is there any heroin?” Edel (Anna Healy) asks, succumbing to recreational drugs while waiting for the world to end.
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Drugs and violence won’t surprise those who enjoyed the excesses of Morton’s previous plays The Roaring Banshees, from 2019, and The Hellfire Squad, from 2016. Denouement is closer to Taboo, also from 2016, which is another of the playwright’s dramas about confinement, written in far subtler strokes.
During Edel and Liam’s comedown, their differing priorities with the time they have left becomes apparent. She notices an outage in the United States and anticipates a wave of destruction sweeping the world: “I’ve got to get hold of the kids!” Liam still has other concerns. “I’ve got to get his finished!” he says, tapping at his typewriter.
As Edel drifts between her unresponsive husband and one-sided phone conversations with friends, Morton’s play seems almost a riff on Samuel Beckett’s absurdist classic Happy Days, which buries a woman in sand to converse with herself. (Edel even briefly raises a parasol above her head, in re-creation of that play’s iconic image.)
Unlike in Happy Days, the husband of the play talks back quite a bit. In debating whether to use their remaining time to look at the past (“I need a finished document. Proof in my hand that I lived”) or to address current problems in their marriage (“I’m wondering if there’s anything we can still do to fix this,” Edel says), their arguing is curiously one-note. What exactly is the couple’s contrast?
Morton’s script isn’t to be blamed. In Jimmy Fay’s production, the reluctances within the couple’s marriage seem readily accepted. As we see Liam easily dodge accountability yet again, the opportunity feels missed for a far more intriguingly selfish creature, backed into corners and capable of artfully squirming his way out.
It’s not a wedding anniversary without some success. “I was always wondering if you noticed how much he was flirting with me,” Edel says, resorting to bringing up a past flame. She has her husband’s attention at last.
Denouement is at the Lyric Theatre, as part of Belfast International Arts Festival, until Saturday, November 15th
