Life in the mental
The audience loves this couple of hours in the company of a resident of St Conal's mental hospital, but Colin Murphy feels left outLittle John Nee's new work about St Conal's mental hospital in Letterkenny, The Mental, is a one-man band of a play. Researched, written, directed and acted by Little John Nee, it is a messy, mixed bag of theatrical conceits and ideas. There are moments when it hits home beautifully: when Little John Nee's intense identification with the patient he portrays, and the simplicity of his ideas, combine to produce moments of searing theatre. But there are long stretches when the play wanders around the stage with him, trying out different styles and exploring different anecdotes, seemingly indifferent to whether they cohere within the whole.
Little John Nee plays Joe, a boy from Donegal, the archetypal innocent outsider who struggles to fit in, and, in despair, is prone to flashes of rage. From within the walls of St Conal's (beautifully captured in Mike Regan's playful set – the nooks and crannies of which are underexploited in the play), Joe recounts episodes from his boyhood, from his time as a young man in New York, and from his time as a patient.
It is authenticity that is of concern here, rather than the story: in making his play reliant upon a sole character, who is himself mentally ill, and in determining to explore the twists and turns of his character's life as much as possible, Little John Nee forsakes the possibility of delivering a coherent, dramatically compelling play.
Instead, we have a loving homage to Joe, and to those who have suffered like him. The tone throughout is reverential – as befits a play where the people who are always the closest critics of any script, the director and actor, are one person with the writer.
Joe emerges as a credible and well-crafted character, but one who does not have a larger tale to tell. Unlike, for example, Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom, there is no moral force to the play beyond the simple virtue of telling the protagonist's life story; there is no dramatic arc; there is no compulsion to the tale or edge to the telling. There is a brilliantly incisive moment when the patients are marched through the town's main street on an excursion to the circus – but apart from that, little insight on the role of mental health/illness, and of the institutions, within Irish society.
Much is sacrificed by the failure to cast other characters in the play with Joe. The characters are there in the story, but brought only briefly to life by Little John Nee as he skips deftly between them. A girlfriend from his time in New York flutters briefly into tantalising life, a glimpse of all that Joe's life could have been, and a glimpse of what this play could have been were there more made of the conflict between Joe's inner and outer worlds, and the impact of that on those closest to him.
We are left with Joe's fondness for music, and the contrast between this and the silence of his imaginary companion, Seosamh, as the fulcrum of the play and the source of any dramatic conflict. The music is played live on stage, wonderfully, by Laura Sheeran and Nuala Ní Chanainn (scored by Laura Sheeran), and makes for some beautiful moments and a particularly affecting closing scene. That scene brings the audience to their feet in one of the most enthusiastic ovations I have seen in a long time: clearly, the play worked for them. Meanwhile, I slope out, off to plough my own particular lonely furrow.
The Mental by Little John Nee. Part of Out of the Silence Festival. Finished at axis: www.axis-ballymun.ie for other festival events. At An Grianán Theatre, Port Road, Letterkenny, Co Donegal. 074 9120777. www.angrianan.com until 28 May