Theatre review: In Search of Owen Roe

Arcane ancestor-stories, amongst the most intriguing elements of self-identity, offer rich pickings for dramatists. And this play, written and performed by Vanessa O'Neill, in which she uncovers her Irish roots, certainly digs deep.

Voices in the head and insomnia and a restless consciousness take us back to the 17th-century when Owen Roe O'Neill fought an armed resistance against English rule. One of the most famous antecedents of the dynasty, the commander of the Ulster Army was remembered two hundred years after his death.

It is, however, her great-grandfather, who shares that weighty name eons later, whose life Vanessa desires to explore.

Only, she finds that the body of the man is interred under a bare patch of earth, unmarked, beside his 13-year-old daughter, while everybody else in the family has tombstones to their graves. Why, nobody appears to know.

In this crisp, 60-minute, one-woman show, the playwright tells of how she set out on her mission that has since involved poring over countless documents and trekking many times to her native Shamrock over the past 18 years.

Glynis Angell directs this compelling production that gives us in part a theatrical version of the inside of Vanessa's mind. Sounds of her thoughts come out of the air (in a haunting design by Darious Kedros) about our heads.

The stage is dark and intimate, with a sense of discontent, furnished by a map of Ireland on the one side, and the other a family tree that fruits as the narrative progresses with names.

At the centre, though, of this brooding agitation and persistent search is Vanessa's father slipping into dementia; and in his struggle for freedom and for dignity she recognises a mirror to her own fighting spirit, and indeed her son's emerging quality of independent thinking.

Albeit subtle, Vanessa's scalpel is uncompromising. She peels away one layer of time after another, alluding to idiosyncracies and strength of character that seem to have passed down the generations like breathing heritage.

At its best, the writing combines poetry and soaring images, as it frames the action with ghostly figures that blur the boundary between the dead and living.

But it is Vanessa switching effortlessly into and out of myriad roles -- her father, the great-grandmother, various Irish men she meets at the pub, her son, cousins, to name a few -- using artistic unities to fuse past and present that this staging really shines.

Yet, despite its acuity and tenderness, some parallels drawn across the genealogy feel somewhat elbowed into the account, and strains credulity.

Still, as revelations unfold and we come to understand perhaps why the title character was buried without a stone, and to speculate at his decision to calling himself Gary, In Search of Owen Roe, indubitably satisfies.

It is one of those memorable works that leaves you wondering about your own roots and their secrets and about the same vein that shapes lives today as they shaped them then.

Here, Now

Vegetation riots on the earth,

Big trees are king;
The stretch of river runs along,

Contented,
Into the quiet of shaded distances.

The air is warm and sweet,

Of mud,
The mystery of wilderness

Vigorous upon my nostrils.

On the silvery bank
A pair of reptiles

Are sunning themselves side by side;

There is joy in brilliance of the light,

The stream, the great silence, impenetrable forest.

For they've never known him,

Nor anything in their lives 

Of his hollowing absence.

Under The Tree

Grasping a handful

Of earth where

His ashes were spread

And where he'd burnt

His manuscript

I cannot know if

This is his or him

Light, My Raison D'etre

Light, my raison d'etre
A crack in the sky, the sleepy white of your eyes, the
   company I am happy with,
Clasped hands swinging down the quiet path,
The grass whitened by footprints of overnight mist,
Leaves coloured by autumn red and gold and purple and brown,
Orange, burning rim of cigarettes
The tip-toe of stars on the slumbering lake, headlamps and
   fireflies, the open refrigerator, lantern hanging
   on the empty porch,
The trickle of these images, gentle and imperfectly described by turns,
   limited only by talent, when I summon them to mind.
Poetry that puts on a film, takes the seat next to me,
   arms around my shoulders,
Poetry without words, poetry that does not care for words,
   has no time for words,
The mother, for whom 'motherhood' is merely a collection of alphabets
   invented by somebody to fill a void, the mother who cannot give a damn
   if the word exists or not,
The urgent seeker that moves down the skirt, then up from the hem,
   to make its way hungrily between folds,
New learning, new thoughts, new beginnings,
   old books, old times, old-er surrender,
Slant of the sun upon wet earth, the stir of wind against my
   skin, the scent of wood and bark and scrub and roots,
   sounds of air that sink and swell,
Life that basks in love, then reflects the product of that love,
Signature sharps and flats that join from down and up
   to dissolve into rhythm of movements,
Writing that creeps discreetly up and takes hold,
   that presses upon you with firm, lusty arms,
   curves his strong legs about your consciousness,
   until you yield to his will, breathless and fulfilled,
Lightning that stains upwards, then
   another, a third, again,
Your mouth breaking into a smile against the steamy moon,
The smell of rain, the wholesome sense of rest
   and content and relief,
And this list gathered from scattered puddles,
   that I now toss into the fire.

For Susan's prompt

Poets United Midweek Motif -- Organic

Home

It reads your pulse, comfortable as dusk,
Comfortable that time flows where it must,
And strength back in recrudescence of life,

That the hands of the sisters Sufficiency and Sun
Smear upon eyes and cheeks,
Some pearly pink and deuce of light.

For there is no vacancy; alone, I have chartered
The place. I put on the lamp as the street sign
Quivers out --  then at the desk that catches my silhouette, I feel

Rhythm stir the air, the beat of my drum in salubrious ear.

For Sumana's prompt

Poets United Midweek Motif -- Home

How Long Were We Black

You and I, how long were we black
Now emerging, we slowly rise, as a plant after landslide
There is colour, long have we kept out, but now it returns
We return; we are the colour
We are music, strawberries, lace, cinemas, literature
We are here; we are of the human race
We are walks in the park, dappled foliage on wooden bench, stray tennis ball on the grass
We are the sun
We are a pair of rosellas fluttering away into the east
We hum the tune on our fingers, surf the chords of Rachmaninov, determined as any
We are where the sky and the ocean meet without a joint, the low haze like fabric in diaphanous folds
We are also mud on the skirt lifted above the knees, sound of the river, current between our toes
We are lowered eyes, corners of mouth curling up, meaningful pauses, we are cheekiness
We are bookends, standing side by side with no distance between them
We are novels lying flat on the shelf
We tap upon a blank page with a cheap pen and scribble and dream, we waste time
We are poetry, we are prose, we exist on napkins, spill across scrap-paper
We are what a sunset is: capricious, indifferent, perceptible, imperceptible
We are tenderness, frost, fire, laughter, empathy
We are cafes and galleries and dramas and alleyways
We are hand cream, flowers in a watering can, long chats with mum, bowl of noodle soup
We had lunged about, headlong, in darkness, you and I, back and forth, corner to corner, but now
We are home
We have dug our roots deep inside the ground from where we are free with which there is joy.