Theatre review: Kate Stanley Brennan shines in Shit, at Project Arts Centre
Kate Stanley Brennan and Nicky Lewis in Shit, at Project Arts Centre. Picture: Simon Lazewski
Billy, Bobby and Sam are the kind of women we pretend don’t exist. The kind we look away from in the street, or avoid on the public transport they’ve definitely not paid for.
As played here by Kate Stanley Brennan, Aisling O’Mara and Nicky Lewis, they seem specific Dublin types, their working-class accents by now a staple of theatre in the capital. But there’s no arc of redemption here, no heart-of-gold character revealed under the gruff exterior. These three embody and repeat the violence they’ve been unjustly subjected to by fate, circumstances and an uncaring society; they never transcend it.
But we must recall this version of Shit is in fact a brilliant act of localisation by Jenny Jennings and her cast, from the Australian playwright Patricia Cornelius. It sees production company ThisIsPopBaby kick off their 15th anniversary programme in uncompromising fashion.
For Cornelius’s trio, cops, teachers, mothers, foster parents – all authority is a challenge to be defied rather than a support system to be leaned upon. Who can blame them? Thrown together in a holding cell after a lashing out too far, the three conspire to invent an ideal mother who would nourish them – named Kathleen, in perhaps a bitter nod to Ireland’s all-too-often sidelined egalitarian aspirations. They trade tips on how to take a beating, and when to dish one out. They project a debased femininity, express internalised misogyny, and most of the time sidestep introspection, or suppress memories of abuse that are too painful. There’s no closure here. There’s barely even any opening up.
And that’s Cornelius’s point. There’s nothing here to comfort us, no sop to the nice, well-meaning people watching on. It makes for a largely joyless experience. That these three are ultimately unsympathetic is their tragedy.
Precisely because of that, it’s not a tragedy that we can easily share; but a magnetic performance by Kate Stanley Brennan, together with a spiky Nicky Lewis and a commanding Aisling O’Mara ensure this challenging work rarely fails to engage.
