EDINBURGH 2023: Review: HEAVEN, Traverse

Mairead and Mal go back to County Offaly for her sister’s wedding. They’ve never been a passionate couple, but in recent times their marriage has become even more stale. Eugene O’Brien writes a bittersweet and melancholic play that follows two dissatisfied 50-year-olds who are still trying to find their place in the world. Targeted to a more mature audience, the piece is funny in a wistful, sad way, with a commonplace adult humour and generational tensions woven into sadly relatable personalities. O’Brien crafts incredibly human characters, painting a picture of a run-down country with no hopes of economic resurrection.

Jim Culleton directs Andrew Bennett and Janet Moran as they take turns to open up in conversational confessional style. They do so in a liminal space designed by Zia Bergin-Holly. The set is suspended between interior and exterior: the outside wall of a building, with its stripped posters and lonely lamppost is at odds with the comfy armchair and barstools that stand in front of it. While Mairead and Mal meet old and new flames, O’Brien takes the opportunity to explore the fallout of repressed homosexuality and the rampant toxic relationship with alcohol.

These destructive urges become the catalyst for their individual journeys. Mal’s fantasies of being jerked off by Jesus echo Mairead’s unbridled feistiness. While beautifully written and flowing with ease, Heaven drags a little, unaided by the unhurried pace of Culleton’s vision and the rather stagnant subsequent visuals. All in all, the play aims the spotlight at the incessant search for one’s identity. While quite inconclusive in its ending, it depicts a truthful view of relationships and the reality of small-town communities.

With xenophobic family members, the struggle with sobriety, the attempts at clinging to one’s own youth, the impossibility of escaping vicious circles, O’Brien holds up a bleak mirror to society.

Heaven runs at the Traverse Theatre on the following dates: 5-6, 8-13, 15-20, 22-27 August.

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