Tales of Ballycumber

"I Walk a Lonely Road"

Is suicide the irrational act of a capricious and headstrong person? Ill considered? Is it caused by an outside agency - family, an unfaithful boyfriend, a bully boss, loss of a job, bankruptcy, depression, anger, illiberal education, calumny or any other of the ills that flesh is heir to? The psychiatric services seem to find the problem of suicide impregnable and, indeed, neuroleptic medication - anti-depressants in particular - seem to be implicated in a negative way in many a suicide. Alcoholic drink is often involved if not as a cause then at least as a catalyst for suicide.

There were plenty of punters around The Abbey Theatre on Friday evening last attending Sebastian Barry’s “Tales of Ballycumber.”

The blurb on the program said

“In search of advice, young Evans Stafford calls at the home of friend and strong-minded traditionalist Nicholas Farquhar. The following day, as Farquhar learns the devastating consequences of this meeting, he discovers that his memories and words are governed by a buried history, a force far greater than himself.”

The set was spare, a table, two or three chairs, a few cups and a two kettles, a tall chimney breast, a background of low heights covered in a blanket of serried daffodils. The play opened with the ghostly figure of the girl singing in the background “Heartbreak Hotel.” Lisa Hogg in this part has an excellent singing voice and she did a lot to create the pervading atmosphere of death, depression, and a spiritual or unworldly quality which seemed to pervade the play. Other performers were Stephen Rea as Farquhar; Aaron Monaghan as Evans; Liam Carney as Evans’ father, Andrew; and Derbhla Crotty as Tania, Nicholas’ sister. There was a touch of Synge to the dialogue although the play seemed to me to be set in the Wicklow mountains where the main work was sheep-farming.

Four or five deaths are retailed or discussed during the play which lasted without an interval from 19.30 until 21.05. Two of these deaths were suicides. Necrophilia means a sort of erotic attachment to or interest in corpses. Perhaps there is another word for an exaggerated interest in death. Although early on the audience reacted in good humour with a few laughs the seriousness of the subject matter soon silenced the attendance.

However Andrew’s question to Farquhar is never convincingly answered,

“What did you say to him, you Fucker?”

A doctor I know (he is a general practitioner not a psychiatrist) commenting a few years ago on suicide remarked, almost as an aside, that there is a logic to it. However the logic of Evan’s suicide, in purely dramatic terms, escaped me. I remember I sat through Alan Gilsenan’s excellent documentary “I See a Darkness” when it was premiered in the Irish Film Institute in 2007. That full length documentary dealt with the death by suicide of Simon Moroney from Drogheda at the age of 15 in 2003. The logic of that death also escaped me in literal terms.

So I was left wondering if there is any element of genuine catharsis involved in the play (or in the documentary) or whether we are simply involved as in a well-rehearsed, maudlin peep-show?