I DO NOT LIKE THE DR. FELL Bernard Farrell

Ulster Actors Company Belfast Civic Arts Theatre

THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM Graham Reid

Lyric Players Lyric Theatre (Belfast)

The first of these plays is meant to be a savage satire on Encounter Groups (!). This helps to explain why it does not work as a play. Such groups are rare anywhere, especially one would have thought, in Ireland.

The treatment of the Gay sub-theme is very revealing. Roger (who engages in an open power struggle with Suzy, the pseudo-American Group Leader) is a closet case of the first order. Unfortunately such persons do not involve themselves in Encounter Groups. If they did, they would adopt the Chestertonian tactic of hiding leaves in forests. As our reader knows, the best way to draw attention away from one’s unorthodox sexuality is to announce it (loudly) at the earliest opportunity. That way, people are so impressed by one’s honesty / shocked at one’s frankness that they will not refer to it again.

One got the impression that Bernard Farrell had read a lot of smart play scripts but hasn’t actually listened to people talking. Lots of the lines were funny, but not believable. Neither was the hysteria which erupted when Joe Fell, a kind of Lord of Misrule, announces that he has planted a bomb in the room next to the one in which the encounter session is held. No reason is given, come to that, for anybody being there. Who sent them? Why did they go? Did they pay for the privilege?

The acting was superb, the directing wasn’t as obtrusive as Roy Heayberd’s tends to be, the set was extremely simple and effective. It was a good evening’s entertainment. Messrs Farrell and Heayberd (and the UAC has a rather sinister ring to it, doesn’t it?) kept a houseful of customers on the edge of their seats for several hours. That is by no means a despicable achievement. But Mr. Farrell should not be trumpeted as Ireland‘Seanswer to Ibsen, Chekov, and Eugene O’Neill rolled into one.

Graham Reid’s play is better, if only because he has chosen his target better. This time it is the State educational system and its products, murderous morons as Tony the not-terribly-believable central character calls them. Apart from Tony, and some of his speeches, I believed every word every one of the characters said. Including the rather (too?) eloquent Tom Allen, who defends his involvement with the UDA (Ulster Defence Association).

As a result of this conversation, Tony discovers that Roy. a quiet studious boy, has been imprisoned for life, life, life and life. This, and a brush with the hard facts of working-class Loyalist life, determines this rather bland, middle-aged, teacher of English to throw over the teaching and intellectual habits of a life-time) (he suspected boys with pimpleSeand dirty collars grew up to be gunmen).

Needless to say, he is crushed, his colleagues desert him, and the headmaster (a bit too much of a deus ex machina, I felt) humiliates him.

The people in this play are, possibly, cliched, but they become three dimensional by the vibrancy of the language they use. The acting, like that in the Arts’ is superb, rather like a good band in action.

But I have two small complaints. The set is divided into three. The centre is meant to represent the street, the left is the schoolroom cum staffroom, the right is the parlour of the house where Eric, Roy‘s ex-UDA big-noise father lives with Ruby. As most of the action of the play is in the staffroom, this arrangement tends to waste space and give the customers a crick in their collective neck.

And, while I am positive that youths on the periphery of the UDA (Ulster Young Militants) would wear sexy, tight knickers, I am dubious about even a particularly dim one wearing a silver Celtic cross. (I was looking very hard).

Se n McGouran