Truth, Love or Promise – Viking Theatre – Review
by Frank L.

Dates – Monday 21 August 2023 20:00 – Saturday 2 September 2023 20:00

Brenda enters. She is alone. She has come to attend a creative writing course. She is joined by Maureen and Joanna. Maureen comes from West Belfast divorced, sexually frustrated with a coarse turn of phrase with political views which are associated with her neighbourhood. Joanna is English and has chosen to join her husband in Belfast and her reason for joining the class is ill-defined.  Brenda herself is a reluctant participant and is only present because her sister Paula had persuaded her to attend.  Maureen wants to write a story about her Dad who was once a singer in England but returned to Belfast because of discrimination. Joanna wants to write a story about her uncle who has had many careers including a spell in the British Army. Brenda wants to write a story about her granny about whom she knows painfully little.

McKeever and her director Dan Gordon keep things simple. The set consists of a group of 5 practical chairs laid out in a semi-circle. The only other items on the stage are a small group of chairs of the same breed stacked in the corner. One is entering some non-descript social space where various types of community activity take place.

McKeever plays each of these three very different women just relying on her body language and an uncanny ability to create three very different accents. Maureen has a rough, aggressive Belfast clip you could cut with a knife, Joanna has an estuary southern English whine while Brenda has a Northern Ireland accent which is gentle in tone. Each week their teacher sets them little exercises to do and through them and their general chats, each one of them begins to discover they have more in common with each other than they realised even though each is cut from a very different cloth.

McKeever as a writer has created a first-rate text. The conversations between the three women are perfectly gauged. The exercises that the teacher sets each week are inspired not least the reference to Ernest Hemingway’s short story of six words. She manages to weave the stories of each of these women into a credible whole as they gradually become friends. Each of them becomes three-dimensional and an individual of complexity.  Maureen and Joanna make discoveries that reveal that members of their families had secrets which alters their certainties about life. Joanna realises that she is on a journey far more revealing than she could have imagined even though Maureen would criticise the use of the word “journey” with her upfront frankness. In fact, McKeever has created a world that would encourage you to join a creative writing course.

McKeever as a performer is breathtaking. She crisscrosses the conversations between the three women seamlessly only using her voice and body movements to delineate each. Her attention to detail never slips and her timing is spot on.   It is a performance of the first order – a tour de force.

Written and performed by Nuala McKeever
Directed by Dan Gordon