LemonSoap Productions
Mick Lally Theatre, Galway
October 22
****
My hope in writing these short theatre pieces is to help promote the arts in Galway, get people interested in plays, and provide an opportunity for smaller productions to actually get a review, which is no easy task in Connacht.
Saying that, it is all very subjective. There are many eminent theatre critics in Ireland, all with contrasting views, but for me, Chris O'Rourke of The Arts Review is the finest. He is honest, erudite and analyses performances in extraordinary detail. He always looks for the positives in a play, and does not fall into the trap of emperor's new clothes. So when I read that Ultan Pringle's Boyfriends received five stars from The Arts Review, I simply had to see it.
What is this play about? Not a whole lot, really.
Boyfriends is less of a story, more so a fly-on-the-wall insight into a tumultuous gay relationship; one which often paints the love lives of gay people as unromantic, and purely transactional. But are they really so different to heterosexual relationships? For all of its cynicism, Boyfriends is scattered with uproarious humour, as well as some deeply moving scenes.
The real depth lies not in the loud, dramatic, emotionally charged moments, but in the minor details. When the ripped, calorie-counting Emmanuel Okoye fat-shames Pringle for choosing to eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant, he responds with something along the lines of: ‘I’m going to go and enjoy a delicious meal,’ before leaving the apartment, alone. Who would have thought that such a simple line could make me question my entire relationship with food? Of course, the power is not in the line, but in the delivery.
He does it again, when being bombarded for working as a barista and his privileged ‘supplemented living’ arrangement. This time, all it took was a facial expression. Pringle’s deeply nuanced physical response to this insult displays a hurt so human, and so real, that I felt like it was being said to me. It broke me.
Yet, one must be careful not to heap all of the praise on Pringle, because Okoye’s performance is extraordinary. And it would be unfair to paint his character as the villain of this story: a man so confused, so lost, that he reminds us all of ourselves in our twenties. Not knowing what he wants from life; not ready to fall in love; not really understanding what love is. His free spirit, life-of-the-party act is undermined by a restless frustration and insecurity, bubbling away under the surface all of the time.
Throughout the play, my partner and I were consistently elbowing each other, as if to say: 'That's you', 'No, that's you', demonstrating just how accurate Pringle's observations on relationships are.
A friend of mine went to see it on the second night and wasn't taken by it, but then again, good art should divide. The fact that we were still discussing it, and arguing over it in a pub nearly a week later, tells you all you need to know: what greater compliment could you give a playwright?
Boyfriends by Ultan Pringle finishes its current tour this week. See www.lemonsoap.ie
