Weaving a gentle magic

Dermot Bolger's The Townlands of Brazil, which explores social change in Ireland, and Ballymun in particular, has a fervent emotional core that is truly invigorating, says Colin Murphy
There is a video art installation upstairs at the Axis, a curtain separating it from the rest of the lobby. A group of teenagers appear to be taking advantage of the curtain for some mild courting, while the voice in the video piece jabbers on about something or other. Out in front, there's a brash, clever piece of sculpture called ‘Prototype Ikea Barricade', a play on developments in Ballymun. A group of young girls is hanging around, accosting punters with in-jokes and much giggling. The Axis is buzzin'.
This is the context in which Dermot Bolger writes: not simply Ballymun, but a fervent sense of regeneration and community engagement. That sounds, and is, worthy. The success of both the Axis, and Bolger, is that they manage to make it fun.
The Townlands of Brazil could be very bad. There are extended, undramatic monologues. Characters speak in language so poetic as to undermine their credibility. The play ducks and dives down obscure alleyways, often cul-de-sacs. The two separate stories that make up the play echo each other so closely as to be preposterous. The finale attempts to bring a dubiously circular close to proceedings. The play buckles at places from the weight of social observation it carries.
But The Townlands of Brazil is a moving, invigorating, funny piece of theatre. Bolger writes like a poetic Mike Leigh. He is not afraid to be heartwarming or sentimental. His characters suffer a mind-boggling litany of tragedies. He seeks drama in the detail of local lives.
Last year, he gave us From These Green Fields, a play about the flats on the eve of their destruction. Townlands is not quite as acute as that, having set itself the grander ambition of using Ballymun to document broader social change in Ireland.
Bolger gives us two stories: a girl leaving Ballymun, pregnant, for Liverpool, in the 1960s; and a young Polish woman in Ballymun today, struggling to send money home to her daughter in Poland. Both have lost the men in their lives, both are on the margins of society. Their stories are strained with excessive detail and awkward plots, but the characters are vividly captured and the emotional core of the play rings true.
And there's plenty of humour in Bolger's acute observation. One of the immigrant characters reflects with bathos: “When I was a child, I dreamed of escaping to the west. It never looked like Ballymun.” There's the mushroom farmer known derisively by her workers as “Just Call Me Carmel”. The Moldovan girl looking forward to the Eurovision, who exclaims to her Polish roommate, “Winning the Eurovision will be as good as having a pope!”
Kelly Hickey, in her professional debut, gives a strong, steady performance as the pregnant local girl. Polish actress Julia Krynke, in her Irish debut, is stunning; it's exciting to see a Polish actor give such rich voice to a Polish character in an Irish play on a stage in Dublin. Around them, Brendan Laird, Ann Kent, Ann O'Neill and Vincent McCabe play a variety of characters with alacrity and deftness. McCabe's Turkish labourer, though not very obviously Turkish, is riveting, a study in lonely dignity.
Bolger's plays can seem like a novel barely adapted. That should be a criticism, but this weaves a gentle magic that defies cynicism. He has dared to imagine what these new Irish lives are like. We won't know if his vision is accurate until we start to see their own plays on the Irish stage; until then, this is vital theatre.