UK Theatre Network

The Gift

By

Eamon McDonnell

An elderly farmer and what looks to be either his young wife or his daughter are in a shabby living room.  I am assuming they are related because he is a curmudgeon and I cannot think why she would be there otherwise.  But why does she seem so at ease and why is she wearing that old-fashioned dress?

A knock on the door and it is Callum the new neighbour – he is generally reticent but mentions he has been to prison.  Collum befriends the farmer (Ned) and reveals his loyalist identity in Northern Ireland.  Another woman then comes in.

If it is now established that we are living in the present, Ned seems firmly in the past. He does not have a television, rarely meets a neighbour, and, when he offers a drink to his guest,  pours a glass of whiskey into a jam jar (after having spat into the jam jar to clean it).

It is a world where Ned believes the past and present meet – a world of spirits and ghosts and Banshees and even leprechauns.  It is in the borderlands between north and south.

Driving the whole play is the viewer’s attempt to make sense of it all.  Why does the kind woman refer to the window so much (shades of Heathcliff)?  And the other woman?  Why is she so bitter?  And why does she have blood on her clothes (shades of MacBeth)?

Of note also is the language.  In some instances it is lyrical but I felt there was an over-reliance on the Oirish.  “I do be liking it...” “Do I be boring you...” do people really be talking like that?  People talk in clichés but again there was a bit too much for me of the “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” dialogue.

Nonetheless, all four actors turn in impressive performances in a well-directed play that holds your attention throughout.  There are two stories told in this bleak but compelling drama, which runs eighty minutes without an interval.

Richard Woulfe