Abbey, Dublin
An unnamed narrator recollects a 1970s childhood of institutional brutality and sectarianism in this allusive memory play
L
anguage is twisted and slippery in Frank McGuinness disturbing new memory play for the Abbey theatre. As an unnamed narrator, Man (Ryan Donaldson) looks back on his 1970s youth during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, he says that the past “does not belong to me”.
The Man’s recollections come in snatches: sometimes hazily with humorous shrugs, then sharply focused. First, his early years with his violent mother, who struggles with alcohol addiction; later his time in a residential care home for teenage boys run by a luridly sadistic sexual abuser known as Beastie Billy. There the boys are subjected to Billy’s Old Testament-infused sectarian and misogynist rhetoric, while being pimped at night to members of the British security forces. “We serve the forces,” the narrator’s teenage self says ironically, as ideas of loyalty and service become increasingly distorted.
