Jake Mace
Chekhov’s eyepatch is the name of the game in EUTC’s revival of David Ireland’s 2018 Fringe hit. Will Northern Ireland playwright Ruth Davenport (Connie Bailie) and English Director Leigh Carver (Will Grice) allow contemptuous and self-obsessed American actor Jay Conway (Dylan Kaeuper) to wear an eye patch on stage? Does that eyepatch represent the ‘moral decay’ or the thin skin of Hollywood? And in a world clawing eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth, how do systems of post-colonialism, misogyny and racism desist when powerful cis white men keep claiming the top billing?
Emily Sharp’s tight and thorough direction gives endless credence to Ireland’s biting satire, in which identities have become fraught in the venture of self-absorbed arts folk indulging other self-absorbed arts folk for the sake of self-absorbed arts folk. An impressive and absorbing arc of tension rises between the trio, each struggling to gain control of the political narrative in an upcoming production of Davenport’s script the night before rehearsals begin. The narrative skilfully unpacks the inadequacies of creative people on all ends of the strata to understand one another, though, most potently it presses in on the vacuous nature of how those with the most power deploy it ungracefully and repulsively.
It’s in the misunderstandings between one another, that, paradoxically, we often find the truth. In the case of Ulster American that truth isn’t just between one another, but also in the complexities of national identity, liberalism, race & gender relations, and subsequently how all those things sit within people’s individual psyches. Ireland’s conclusion seems to be that we are all too frivolously uninvolved in one another to actively understand these truths, or at the very least, even recognise them.
Through Bailie’s entrance as the unrelenting Davenport the core tensions of the story arise, and as we start to realise how shallow Kaeuper’s Conway will go for the sake of his own inflated ego, the stakes rise phenomenally fast. Bailie shows an intense and impressive range over the ninety minute runtime that sits as the most naturalistic portrayal of the three characters in the opening acts, and soon becomes wrapped in something much more sinister.
Kaeuper’s detestable vision of Conway evokes an impressive compilation of Trump, Spacey, Weinstein, Polanski and beyond in it’s equal balance of contemptuous ignorance and aggressive disillusion. At the end of every sentence he speaks you almost want to groan, and his yoga poses mid-conversation gathered plenty of belly laughs in the room. The duo’s diametric opinions clash under the watchful eye of Grice’s Carver, who subtly reveals his tendency to exaggerate, and as his English liberal sensibility falls apart unpacks the fragile egos of ‘well-meaning’ powerful creative directors.
Much credit should be given to stage fight co-ordinator Františka Vosátková’s efforts in the play’s closing moments. Audible gasps among the audience as the first drop of blood appears on Ruth’s white blouse let us know we’re in for something dark, and the delivery was impeccable. As the sequence progresses and visions of the aforementioned Chekhov device roll through your mind it’s both hard to look away and hard to watch at the same time. Body horror is infamously tricky to pull off convincingly on stage, and genuine gasps struck the room as first blood was drawn.
Expansive set design from Rafaela Scopeliti and Alex Kerr is used entertainingly in the closing act of the play as the trio leap around one another, scrapping for justice and egos, and the design compliments the heightened realism deployed at the play’s beginning, that completely unravels into whip-smart satirical farce by the end.
EUTC show the gold standard of student theatre in this piece – intelligent, provoking, fantastical and seen through with absolutely polished performances. A well-earnt standing ovation from the audience was far from a surprise.
Recommended Drink: Would you like to neck another glass of wine with that?
Performances of Ulster American have now concluded at Bedlam Theatre for the current season.
Elisabeth Flett
Lucy Best
