![]() There’s perhaps a slight lack of room in the script to give Seamus the space to explain why he has taken the actions he has, but Mick Innes handles the character well. ![]() ![]() Elwood is magnificent as Jerome, his wit and bluster hiding a deep sadness, while Damien Avery gives him perfect foil as the much more morally tortured Vincent. The performances are uniformly superb, even if the accents wobble in one or two cases. While proceedings lean a little toward sitcom territory at times Power keeps it from tipping over and the levity and misery mesh nicely. This isn’t a sign of tonal inconsistency. Assassin is a very, very funny piece of work, throwing jokes at its audience so rapidly and so consistently that the quieter, darker moments stand out all the more clearly because of it. If that sounds heavy, then know that Power handles it all with astonishing lightness. The question is can Jerome, a killer with a social conscience of sorts, ever be the solution to Pod? Or are two wrongs going to make a really, really big wrong by the end? This is in contrast to both his granddad Seamus – a retired police inspector who has given Jerome his bloody mission – and Uncle Pod, who has never killed anyone personally but who can still write off human life, in great quantities, with alarming ease. Despite his habit of slaughtering people, Jerome is not an individual defined by aggression. But Power’s real interest is in violence as both a cause of and solution to life’s problems. There’s a marvellous debate about religion in the second act and its role in human development – “you don’t go from apes to atheism without religion” Bishop Gus (a brilliantly arch John Watson) opines at one point. The Slapdash Assassin is a small-scale play that nevertheless tackles some wide-ranging themes in pleasing depth. Jerome appears decidedly relaxed about his chosen career – even when it turns out that his decision to execute some IRA lackeys a year earlier has had some unexpected repercussions. The fact that this causes more consternation than Jerome’s habit of murdering people proves the blunt end of a sophisticated argument about the relative comfort we take in brutality as opposed to sexuality. This is shown when Jerome’s cousin Vincent returns home from Las Vegas with that most awkward accessory for a Catholic priest, a new wife. Sex, though, is a bit more eyebrow raising. Violence is clearly as much a part of the texture of this household as the somewhat dated furniture and faded photographs. This is dealt with so matter-of-factly it takes a couple of minutes to fully grasp what’s happening his grandfather’s first reaction is to tell him to stay outside until he can lay down a tarp. The titular assassin is Jeremy Elwood’s Jerome, to whom we’re first introduced covered in the shit of man he’s just messily killed. It’s a play where the humour is used to excoriate, cutting to the heart of modern Ireland and laughing, perhaps a little ruefully, at the darkness within. One half of the Basement’s ‘Murder Season’, Assassin is a blackly comic microcosm of the country’s sociological make-up, tackling religion, terrorism and politics in a fashion which is half-way between Father Ted and Reservoir Dogs. If you knew nothing at all about Ireland or its people then chances are a trip to see Mark Power’s play The Slapdash Assassin would get you up to speed, or at the very least deter you from visiting anytime in the immediate future.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |