Hooked – Viking Theatre – Review by Frank L.

Feb 2 – 21

Written by Gillian Grattan.
Directed by Don Wycherley.
Starring Steve Blount. Tina Kellegher,Séana Kerslake.

Everyone has secrets. Each constructs a story to hide their secret or creates obstacles to prevent their secret being revealed. Tom (Steve Blount) is married to Mary (Tina Kellegher); their sole child has left home and lives in Amsterdam. They are living somewhere in a village in the South East situate on a river. To an outsider they appear to be the so-called normal married couple relatively content plodding through their middle years. A new neighbour Lydia (Seana Kerslake) in her mid-twenties arrives; she has a son aged four who lives with his father in Dublin as she, because of an illness, was unable to look after him. Those are the patent facts; the latent facts tell different stories.

The set consists of a backdrop of a great expanse of surface water, a clothes line on which a motley collection of personal items and other bits are hanging and three benches arranged in a straight line parallel with the audience, the three actors sit and starting with Mary tell their own part of their common story gradually disclosing more of their hidden lives. Grattan weaves these disclosures with considerable skill, into a coherent single narrative which each of Mary, Tom and Lydia recount from their individual perspectives. Particularly impressive is Steve Blount who with minimal gestures of his body brings into the light his dark little secret, something which he cannot mention to his hurley playing mates nor certainly to his judgemental wife Mary. Tina Kellegher gives no quarter as a brusque tell it as it is housewife, inner loneliness has several sources. Seana Kerslake as a young woman, who has made a serious mistake, creates the mother who longs to have a new relationship with her son. Each of them bring a strong personal power to their roles which assists in increasing the tension as the denouement finely crafted by Grattan comes to fruition.

The three actors at all times command your attention, during this comic but tense 80 minutes of personal revelation. A trip to the Viking at the Sheds is strongly recommended to savour this well crafted, finely acted play.