|
 London visitors are inevitably drawn to the central theater
district, but to the north, Peter Souter's "Hello/Goodbye" has
opened at the Hampstead Theatre while south of the Thames the
Irish import Richard Molloy's "The Separation" is at Theatre
503.
The more ambitious, and successful, of the two, Molloy's piece
zeroes in on newspaper editor Stephen Hanrahan and the three
women in his life - the young Irish-American journalist Molly
Macdonald who is his latest flame, his estranged wife Marion and
their 16-year-old daughter, Gerty.
The play, Molloy's first, is ostensibly about the complications
Stephen and Marion face as Roman Catholic Ireland is on the
verge of legalizing divorce for the first time, through a
referendum.
The real issue is the age-old Irish problem of the drink.
Stephen claims to have given it up but in the opening moments he
sneaks a glass of whiskey, and by the end he is a raging brute
who terrorizes all three women, most especially the perky but
essentially innocent Molly who, as non-Irish, has no clue what
she's gotten into.
Owen McDonnell excels as Stephen, all charm and wit at the
start, and a hideous lout by the end. Able assists come from
Carrie Crowley as his knowing Irish wife, Roxanna Nic Liam as
the daughter with a mind of her own and Susan Stanley as the
Irish-American who may wish she'd never left Kansas.
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Souter's "Hello/Goodbye" is altogether sunnier as two polar
opposites, the outgoing, quick-tempered Juliet, played by Miranda
Raison, and the introverted, nerdy and obsessive Alex, played by
Shaun Evans, move into the same flat at the same time, due to a
mix-up by estate agents.
The notion that opposites attract is nothing new in romcoms, but
Souter's play adds the twist that Alex is a collector of anything
from baseball cards to McDonald's Happy Meal toys, as long as he has
the complete set.
What his last set will be is the main twist in this play whose
energetic and winsome performances by Evans and Raison can't conceal
there is no emotional depth to the characters - what you see at the
start is what you see at the end. But there is a star turn for a
McDonald's Happy Meal wind-up stegosaurus.
(Michael Roddy is the entertainment editor for Reuters in Europe.
The views expressed are his own)
(Editing by Stephen Powell)
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