Another Billy Conn – New Theatre – Review by Helen Major

May 16th – May 21st @ 7.30pm – Tickets: €12.50

Written and Performed by Andrew Kenny

Directed by Peter Reid

Since the emergent popularity of Irish made Love/Hate, it can sometimes feel like Irish storytellers are transfixed by the underside of Dublin life. Crime, drugs and Northside accents are not just in vogue, but it can sometimes feel like Dublin writers have nothing else to talk about. ‘Another Billy Con’ is another play about inner-city youths with a missing moral compass. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not still shocking and emotional.

The whole piece is a series of monologues from the character Aiden, written and performed by Andrew Kenny. He tells us about his childhood and how he fell into gang life. His only possible outlet for hope is his passion for boxing, and his sporadic periods of athleticism. Kenny embodies his character, and is a very believable street-thug-cum-boxer. He moves around the stage like someone breed to be arrogant, someone who can assert their dominance without challenge. For the most part the performance is strong, especially in the physical sense. Though it’s worth noting that emotional output of the character is somewhat unvaried, so it’s not necessarily an overly demanding role in that sense.

Occasionally, however, Kenny would stumble over lines, or you could see him tracking the words in his head, trying to get them out of his mouth in the right order. This could be a result of a few different things; shows like this don’t get massive amounts of rehearsal time, or else it could be opening night nerves, or even the sheer length of the piece can account for the difficulty delivering it cleanly. It was a little off-putting, however, and took you out of the immersion a little.

To his credit, though, he single-handedly held the attention of the audience throughout, and in a production like this, there’s nowhere to hide if you stumbled even a little. The stage in the New Theatre is a small and intimate one, and the set for the show was basic but impressively detailed. As such, the staging was also basic by necessity. There was the occasional instance of unmotivated movement, most of which did not necessarily add anything to the dynamic. The majority of the physicality worked well, though, and in a piece as wordy as this, it’s perfectly forgivable that the creative team wanted to mix up the visuals for the audience.

One aspect of this did not work so well, though. They chose to break up the dialogue with moments of darkened red lighting in which Kenny would do some boxing manoeuvres. As his story got bleaker, the manoeuvres would become less energetic and more haphazard. It was obvious what they were trying to achieve thematically with this, but it felt a bit literal and unnecessarily disruptive. They used it to segment the scenes in the narrative, but it broke up the pacing of the story and damaged the flow without adding much extra depth.

This is a pity, because the writing was good, the lines could have carried themselves without the interruptions. Kenny’s grasp on language is very strong, he managed to stay mostly within the vernacular of his minimally educated character, but he didn’t forfeit any of the poetry of spoken word. His descriptive passages and story progression were executed well, though there were moments where the transition between tension and comedy were not as clean. Generally, though, it was very well composed.

Overall, it was enjoyable to watch. It wasn’t without its mistakes, but it was never dull. It’s a great example of new Irish writing, and I would be happy to see more from Andrew Kenny.