Presented by Benjamin Reilly

Review by Esme Hallworth

Wee Room at Gilded Balloon Teviot

A masterclass in storytelling, this is a slick and confessional look into life in 1960s rural Ireland, with performances from Benjamin Reily and and Isolde Fenton that do not miss a beat. In the small town of Cundannon, the Catholic church’s presence reigns supreme, leaving no room for difference and least of all civil disobedience. Regardless, best friends and surrogate siblings, Colm and Peggy, are taking a stand. If the Pope’s death warrants a day off school, then why not JFK’s assassination? Their plans for protest simmer in the background as their relationship to each other and the town take centre stage.

Peggy is determined, feeling and unsatisfied with smalltown life. Colm is sweet, simple and ‘soft’ in ways that the town would not tolerate. With both school and home life unrelenting, the space between the friends provides a forcefield and a space to imagine city lights and sprawling futures. Through the trials of daily life, there’s a deeply convincing chemistry between them, a proof that the blood of the covenant is ever-thicker than the blessed water of worship.

With no elaborate set, it is the duo’s elastic facial expressions and physicality that step in to depict a vast landscape of emotions and experiences, with a swarm of town tyrants bursting to life through multi-rolling. The use of both lighting and darkness is inventive; spotlights carve out space for narrative progression whilst truths spoken from out of the darkness allow for a different, more sombre, subtext to sift through. The dialogue is often swift and propulsive, delving into troubled family dynamics and ‘shifting’ in the same breath, a kind of whiplash which keeps the momentum through a dialogue heavy hour. Indeed, the script is sharp as a knife and cuts to the bone meaning laughter and tears soon become easy bedfellows. It would be a mortal sin against quality acting to miss this.

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