Two packed lunches
A lunchtime in Dublin can be spent falling in love or just watching others do it, says Colin Murphy
Melody. Presented by Tall Tales Theatre Company. Bewley's Cafe Theatre, 78/79 Grafton Street, Dublin 2. www.bewleyscafe
theatre.com. 086 878 4001. Lunchtimes until 22 July
Thousands of people thronging Grafton St on a Saturday lunchtime. Strutting, shopping, soaking up the sun. Inside Bewley's Café Theatre, cool and airy, 14 people sit at tables quietly supping soup. A woman enters and seats herself primly on a bench on a small, raised stage. A man enters, awkward and apologetic, and sits at the other end of the bench. Furtively, surreptitiously, they eye each other up. The small audience chortles. The pair venture small talk. They flatter each other, gently. And then the music starts – Bach, rising on the warm air, and they close their eyes to it, some of the audience with them.
Melody, by Deirdre Kinahan, is not an ambitious piece of theatre, but it is quite perfectly formed. Forty five minutes during your lunch break, or break from Saturday shopping. It is itself a short story of lunch breaks, and the possibility of romance and adventure at so simple a location as a bench in St Stephen's Green.
Steve Blount plays Mr Kane, from Navan, an IT-support man in the Department of the Marine, where his IT skills are clearly in need of some updating. Maureen Collender is Kathleen, able receptionist in a small city centre business. He is a 46-year-old bachelor, she a widow. She, fastidious and cultured; he, clumsy but gentle. The pace of life on Grafton St outside has clearly left these two behind, but neither seems quite to have noticed.
Steve Blount has a face made of rubber. He is most remarkable when the play is silent, his shifting facial expressions revealing whole interior monologues of hope and despair, as he wrestles with his sandwich or juice carton. Director Veronica Coburn is known for her work with Barabbas, the clowning company; this has their stamp all over it, in the delicate physical comedy that brings the play alive. Maureen Collender is less intrinsically funny – she is not a clown – but she captures the sadness and strength of Kathleen beautifully.
Over a series of short scenes, they delicately advance their relationship. There are hints that something may be amiss, but only hints. And then catastrophe! The real world intrudes upon the idyll of their park bench: neither is quite who they seemed, and the truth shatters their illusions of each other and, perhaps, the possibility of romance...
Back outside on Grafton St afterwards, a string quartet called Eastern Promise is playing Dvorak and stalling shoppers, the sun is shining and, just maybe, people are falling in love. There are worse things to do during your lunch hour. Failing that, though, you could spend it in the café theatre.