Sligo Drama Circle Gave Great Lead

“I am glad I saw this play. I am sure it will go much further and that it will encourage professionals to do it. It is a great lead which the Sligo Drama Circle has given us”, commented adjudicator Mr. Vincent Dowling on “The Curious Savage”, presented on Wednesday night of last week at Bundoran Drama Festival. Mr. Dowling read the author’s foreword to the play which stated that the wrong interpretation would distort the meaning and over-emphasise the distress of the members of “The Cloisters”. It was important that it be played with warmth and dignity by the inmates and that they should have charm.

“Straight away”, said Mr. Dowling, “I think the players lived up to the author’s intentions exactly as he would have wanted them to do”. It was a very difficult play to criticise because in the last few moments it finally came to him that it was a fairy tale and he thought the theatre was the place to tell a story like this. He thought it a very happy choice for the players, every audience and for himself (Mr. Dowling). He need say nothing about the setting as it was a marvellous piece of work and he forgot that the stage was so small. He wondered why credit was not given to the designer. There were two levels which were brilliant in a set like this. Groupings at all times were excellent as was the lighting. It was an example of how high the standard of production was when one picked on the fact that the newspaper cutting in the play looked no older than a week when it should have been yellow and crumpled.

Most of the things he had to talk about all week were absent in this production. It brought him down to the question of general approach, a level he was very happy to be at. The players had a slight consciousness of the author’s intention in the first and second acts and were inclined to have slight stilted speech. He was glad they did not attempt the American accent; They made an effort to be neutral but slightly hampered themselves in doing this by stilting at the end of a line. The timing of the light switch was a little off. “These are almost miserable complaints”, said Mr. Dowling. “I would like to congratulate both producers, Eric Gregan and Una Lappin. The costumes were particularly attractive and the lighting changes fascinating.

The one complaint he had about the acting was in the production section and it was their job to get this stiltedness out of the speech. There was a lack of fluency and it came from the actors not seeing in their minds what they were saying. The one exception to this was Dr. Emmett (Eddie Fitzpatrick) and he believed that this actor believed in what he was saying at all times. “There was a sort of Cusack quality about him”, said Mr. Dowling, adding that it was a lovely performance. Florence (Ann Bourke) was a very attractive girl with personality, utterly right in her conception of the part, but was one of the minor offenders on what he had already said to some degree. The only point which she did not convince him was about her “baby”. He was extremely moved by the delicacy of her kiss to Ethel. “This is what I call great acting”, said Mr. Dowling, “she did it with exquisite taste and tenderness. It was a very beautiful moment”. In the third act her fluency was there.

Hannibal (Brian Bohan) gave a sensibly, right performance but was inclined to finish a sentence on the one note. Fairy May (Gerry Boyle) gave another lovely performance. There was a tendency early on to throw out a comedy line to the audience every now and then. She was moving, full of vitality and could easily have gone over the top but in fact never did. Another very right and sensible performance came from Jeffrey (Vivian Francis). He just wondered about the business of holding his hand to his face to cover an assumed injury as he should hide it from the characters, not the audience. All in all it was a very lovely performance which he (Mr. Dowling) was happy with. He also had some very lovely moments from Miss Willie (Monica Toher) particularly at the end. This was one of the surprises in the play. He saw a lot of the stuff in the play coming but the fact that she was married to Jeffrey cam as a shock to him and this actress handled it very beautifully. She had a little nervous trick she would want to watch of turning away and putting her head down, which he accepted at first, but which, when continued, was not quite right.

Mrs. Paddy (Ruth Crampton) had a most difficult part and it was extremely well played. He had at the end what he considered to be the most important thing in any performance when one was moved to tears by truthfulness and she did it for him. Of the Family, Paddy Dooney as Titus; Liam Mc Kinney as Samuel and Marie Mulvihill as Lily Belle he could not be as complimentary to as he had been to the others, because a facet of feeling they were bad threw them more out of gear than the feeling the inmates had of their goodness. A person never felt they were bad, others judged that. The playing and interpretation of lines were excellent and they gave first class performances but this whole production was on so high a level he could not let this pass without comment. Samuel had not quite as much obvious badness, but he acted excellently. He never felt that Samuel’s moves belonged to him but were those of the producer with the result that his personal motivation was not quite right.

Ethel (Lottie Bourke) had the same lack of fluency in speech, but had every iota of the character of the part. She held back slightly on the lines. Again he was worried about the act she put on for the family. She was letting the audience know far too much about the fact that it was an act. She was well capable of handling this and was excellent in most of the play. Right through he was utterly happy with her, her idea of the lines, her relationship with the others and in the last act her emotion came through, was never undisciplined and was terribly moving. Lily Belle was beautifully costumed and had a complete understanding of the part but was inclined to turn away when she said her lines. The audience, however, may not have noticed it. “This is an example of one of the things which I wonder whether audiences should be let into or not”, said Mr. Dowling, “but it is part of a festival and one must do it”.

from The Sligo Champion, April 20th, 1963