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The Windstealers review: An exuberant satiric romp | Tiger Dublin Fringe
An ambitious project and great vehicle for the ensemble cast
Seona Mac Réamoinn
****
It’s an idea that Flann O’Brien would have relished: stealing wind and selling it back to the hapless inhabitants of a small Irish town plagued by epic gales and economic woe. Jane Madden’s new play for Eccles Theatre is an exuberant satiric romp involving wide boys, cowboys, anagrams and dollops of corruption, and is confidently directed with great pacing by Anushka Senanayake. Into Ballygweeha with a plan to harness the big wind comes Luc Torney, native son turned high-flying entrepreneur, glad-handing and greasing palms until the windmills whirl. But there is a strong scent of double-dealing, and Jacinta Nangle, the young town dissenter (betimes loaded with indignation and a bottle of Tesco gin), is having none of it. Madden’s stints in TV comedy are evident, and there are familiar echoes, from Ballymagash to Craggy Island, but where Windstealers sparks and soars is in its huge physicality and theatrical energy (with much credit to movement director Monika Bienek). No one is spared, be they on the make or on the dole: the sideswipes are gentle but ecumenical, for politicians, bankers, developers, overbearing mothers and whingers. This is an ambitious project and a great vehicle for the ensemble cast of seven (mostly recent graduates from the Lir Academy), who are immaculate and hilarious.
Reviewer: Liam Harrison
“Any work today? Any work yesterday? Any work tomorrow?” In Jane Madden’s raucous satire on modern Irish society and corruption, you think you know the answer to all three questions before they’re given. Only the last question isn’t answered with another no, but “Fuckin’ hope not,” delivered with a half-hearted laugh.
Under the direction of Anushka Senanayake, The Windstealers casts its gaze on the exploiters and exploited in modern Ireland. It is a hilarious romp, the cast of the Eccles Theatre Group possess a fantastic dynamism and superb comic timing. The modern Gombeen men – the swindlers and charlatans, politicians and bankers – are laid bare as usurious parasites. They talk plenty of long-winded gas, resembling the bloated rhetoric of Ulysses’ Aeolus chapter.
Luc Torney, the prodigal son of Ballygweeha returns, suited and booted and ready to pin down “that bitch mother nature” in order to make a quick buck. His plan to take advantage of the windiest town in Ireland by installing a haphazard wind farm has echoes of a certain monorail salesman. There are obvious analogous equivalents in modern Ireland with Luc’s dastardly plan of profiteering from one of the elements. It resonates with evicting people from the earth they live on, overcharging them for the fires that warm them, or, you know, the other one.
The Windstealers performs an array of voices from across society – from the mayor’s whipped husband to the droll tones of the unemployment officer. Madden has shown she has a great ear for dialogue. The movement director Monika Bieniek must also be credited for perfecting the windswept choreography, which matches the sharp-wittedness of the speech.
The interjecting moments of narrative description sometimes disrupts the continuity of the rhythmic speech and action, but it is a testament to how well-crafted the latter is that the plot-driving explanations might seem like interruptions.
Synge famously put it that “In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or an apple.”
Madden crafts a speech which is fully flavoured, prompting bittersweet laughter, as the apple she uncovers is rotten to the core.
👤by Chris McCormack
When the going gets tough, the tough develop a wind-resistant, sidestep shuffle. In Ballygweeha, the fictional Irish gale-town in Jane Madden's brilliant farce, locals have a slanted view of the world, and not just because they're bracing themselves at an angle to stop being lifted away.
There is boundless energy in this Eccles Theatre production from the outset. A dumbshow opener has the cast glide across the stage, battling against gusts in Dylan Tonge Jones's howling sound design. Unemployment has lowered moods and left the dregs of the community (a trio of comical thugs played by Colin Campbell, Lloyd Cooney and Rory Corcoran) unmotivated: "Any jobs going tomorrow? I hope not!".
Of course, this is all under the supervision of an incompetent mayor (delightfully sour Christiane O'Mahony) who doubles as an expert in scapegoating. After a hometown hero (the limber Alan Mahon) returns to establish a wind-farm, money starts pouring into the local economy. You can guess what happens next: property developers take up golf and start eating free-range, and the corrupt become unaccountable.
Under Anushka Senanayake's swift direction, Madden's play presents a parable of the economic crisis while pointing to a culture of passivity. The whistleblowing heroine Jacinta (the completely charming and adroit Katie Honan) rails against the town's reservations, her only ally being a hearty elderly neighbor (a deft Roseanna Purcell).
The stage leaves a lot of room for movement in Ger Clancy's design, dominated by a surly-creviced tree that is subject to clever transformations. Also industrious are Mary Sheehan's confectionary-coloured costumes, adapting flexibly to the actors' character-changes.
It best exposes the conservative attitutes in small town life, the passive thinking that everything will blow over eventually. You'd sense that for this tcollege graduates, the turbines are only beginning to turn.
HUNT & GATHER
THE WINDSTEALERS
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at Smock Alley Black Box for Tiger Dublin Fringe)
Ah, woe betide the Irish people! After 800 Years of Oppression™ under the thumb of the Bastarding Brits, Ireland found herself free, only to be led back into the mire of greed and corruption by a cabal of Bankers™, Developers™, Politicians™ and of course, The Catholic Church™. We wandered naively down the trail like a group of Wayward Paddies™ into a black pit of Neoliberalism™ from which we have yet to emerge. The Downtrodden Sons of Roisín™ were scattered like seeds to the wind, and our Four Green Fields of Éireann™ were condemned to penury and despair. Damn The Flaws In Our National Character! Damn the Colonial Legacy! Damn the Drink! Damn the rain! Damn Denis O’Brien! Damn the miserable fate of The Plain People of Ireland!
Or so the story goes.
Approaching the production of ‘The Windstealers’, Jane Madden’s play at Smock Alley as part of the Tiger Dublin Fringe, directed by Anushka Senanayake, you’d be forgiven for carrying a few assumptions about how it would play out. A political satire concerning the not-entirely-corruption-free harnessing of a natural resource? Politicians, property developers and slick business types conspiring to form a scheme by which the people of the town Lose The Run of Themselves under the guise of economic expansion? The parallels to facets of recent Irish history are obvious, and the fear may be that we are in for 70 minutes of thinly-hidden pulpit bashing and lecturing along the lines of our opening paragraph. Thankfully, the audience is spared such a bluntly orchestrated dive into the crater of dew-eyed navel gazing. For long stretches, ‘The Windstealers’ works quite well.
The town of Ballygweeha is none-too proud to call itself ‘the windiest town in Ireland’. At the opening, the stage is bare but for a single Beckettian, wind-slanted tree. People spend the mornings taking the garden off the roof, as that’s where it ends up after an average blustery night. The townspeople spend their lives walking sideways against the wind in what’s come to be known as the ‘Gweeha Sidle’. Local layabouts have little to do but, well, lay about, half-heartedly complaining about the lack of employment.
Things change for the town, however, upon the return of prodigal son Luc Torney. Flanked by burly Polish bodyguards and pulsating dance music that seemingly comes out of nowhere, he charms the town into accepting a scheme whereby the wind is sold for a profit, the bent tree is hoisted with a windmill, and the townsfolk rejoice at the prospect of a new, more prosperous economic situation.
Developers and builders get rich, golf is suddenly in vogue and everything is going wonderfully. Inevitably, it isn’t long before rats are being smelled, chiefly by Jacinta Nangle, daughter of Ballygweeha’s odious caricature of a mayor.
For all that the play sells itself as a satire on things which have been endlessly satirised before, it manages to come across as somehow fresh and able to say its own thing. Yes, the Irish way of speaking is too often reduced to repetitions of ‘Sure look’ ‘Ah here’ and ‘Go on’, but for the most part the jokes and the story work. The political material, which could have proved stale in the wrong hands, gets a pass as the story manages to stand and gain traction under its own steam. The 70 or so minutes of the run time pass at a fair clip, incident packed and busy as comedy should be, not content to rest on its laurels or dwell too long on whatever aspect of national life is being dealt with at the time.
The 7-strong cast work their way through nearly twice as many roles, and the technical side of the play comes across as seamless. The fact most are recent products of the Lir suggests bright things down the road for Irish theatre in general. The plotting gets a little haphazard towards the end, and you could probably accuse a few of the gags and characterisations of being too broad and blunted for their own good. But these are minor matters. Overall, The Windstealers holds up better than quite a few people may have expected and more than justifies its place at the festival.
The Windstealers plays at the Smock Alley Black Box space, and runs until Sunday 13th.
Words: Cathal Kavanagh
Darragh Doyle
Online Audience Development
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@darraghdoyle
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The Windstealers – Review by C.K. MacNamara
Written by: Jane MaddenDirected by: Anushka SenanayakeStarring: Colin Campbell, Lloyd Cooney, Rory Corcoran, Katie Honan, Alan Mahon, Christiane O’Mahony, Roseanna Purcell.
There is a certain charm to the old joke told so enthusiastically it makes you laugh twice, and at its core this is what The Windstealers excels at.
With a plot spun from the Simpsons ‘Monorail!’ episode glazed into an Irish setting, the play follows the inhabitants of the ‘windiest town in Ireland’ Ballygweeha, a pseudo habitable village at the edge of the world steeped in all the Irish caricatures of a Pat Shortt fever dream. Introduce Luc Torney, native son turned sleazy salesman, returned from the big city with a wind turbine blueprint in one hand, and a fine print riddled contract in the other.
With a half dozen actors stretched into a dozen roles, often switching on the fly, the play lives or dies on its performances – and to the chagrin of the sweat speckled front rows, the cast radiate in the spectrum of absurd characters. Colin Campbell in particular wields a pair of horn rimmed glasses and a heel turn to hold one man conversations at superhuman speeds.
Despite the exuberance of its performances, there is no ignoring this is a style of humour worn into a tired trope, and the familiarity of seeing yet another Father Ted-esque microcosm of Irish life has long outstayed its welcome as a fresh concept. Whilst the old clichés are on full regrettable display, an excellent sound design and sprinkling of new Celtic Tiger inspired caricatures serves to give a new sheen to the usual suspects.
Treading familiar territory, the appeal of The Windstealers lies in its performances; it rushes up to you, script in hand, demanding your attention and throwing its hands up in hyperactive eagerness – a kudos to all good theatre.
The Windstealers by Eccles Theatre Group
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