Theatre review - A Great Arrangement at Gardens Theatre, Ballyphehane, Cork

3/5

The problem with trying to present a historical drama based on the correspondence between the main protagonists is that the letters have to be interesting. Pat Talbot’s play, focusing on the daily missives exchanged between the Irish revolutionary leader, Michael Collins and Kitty Kiernan, his girlfriend, later to become his fiancée, is that the letters are for the most part fairly prosaic. No doubt Collins feared interception of his mail.

The interesting bits are when Collins writes about his loneliness in London, while negotiating the Treaty. There is no hint that he was reportedly cavorting around the metropolis, partying and flirting with women — even having a rumoured fling with Princess Mary of the British royal family.

Not the kind of thing a man could boast about to his betrothed, but definitely material for greater human interest than talk of exhaustion and political frustration.

The play is also an enactment of Collins’s speeches in the Dáil. Dominic McHale as the Big Fella is quite convincing and it helps that he is tall and handsome. There are flashes of roguery in his interpretation of this iconic role.

Irene Kelleher’s Kitty Kiernan is high-spirited and at times intense as she tries to negotiate a relationship via the pen.

The two characters are seated at separate tables on the raised stage, the gap between them underscoring their geographical distance from each other with Kiernan based in Granard in Longford.

Kiernan comes across as a lightweight. She exhorts her man to go to daily Mass. She is pleased to read that he obeys her although she is disappointed that he doesn’t receive communion.

There is no physical communion between the couple in this play. The title of the play refers to the dream the couple had, involving cosy domesticity and companionship into old age. But this was not to be.

This is a polished production with some fine acting including Michael Grennell’s performance as a stern Éamon de Valera. And while the drama ratchets up in the second act, it is closer to a history lesson than a full blown play.

• Continues until April 2