TRUST
By Gary Mitchell. Directed by Carmel O’Reilly. Set design by Peter Wilson. Costumes by Sarah Chapman. Lighting by Neil Anderson. Sound by Michael de Almeida. With Doug Marsden, Joseph Zamparelli Jr., Debra Wise, Alex Martinez Wallace, Helen McElwain, Billy Meleady, and Shawn Sturnick. Presented by Súgán Theatre Company at the Boston Center for the Arts, Thursday through Saturday through May 5.

We can make it official now: Ireland is in the midst of a full-fledged theater renaissance. There’s the crowd from the Republic: Conor McPherson, Martin McDonagh (by way of London), Tom Murphy, Frank McGuinness. There’s Brian Friel and Vincent Woods, from Catholic Northern Ireland. And now there’s Gary Mitchell, a voice of reason from the Protestant Loyalists of Belfast. It’s enough to make one think Ireland might have a united future in which it can celebrate its diversity of faith and culture. We in Boston can get a glimpse of that future thanks to Súgán Theatre Company, which regularly brings us the best of contemporary Irish drama.

Loyalism and playwriting don’t exactly go hand in hand: many strains of Scots-Irish Protestantism consider the stage, like drinking and gambling, works of the Catholic devil. Loyalism and “voice of reason” don’t exactly go together either: ever since the Ulster Protestants blackmailed David Lloyd George into partitioning the island back in 1922, Loyalism has been seen more as the voice of discrimination against Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority, and the likes of Ian Paisley haven’t helped. The voice of Gary Mitchell, on the other hand, transcends sectarianism. His 1999 Trust plumbs the essence of working people without work who are just trying to hold onto what little they have; you could change the Protestant names and substitute Irish Republican Army for Ulster Defense Association and you’d have, well, the same play. Which suggests Northern Ireland’s Protestants and Catholics aren’t as far apart as they’d like to think.

Gary Mitchell was born in the North Belfast Loyalist housing estate of Rathcoole (where he still lives), and when he was growing up, as he says, “I tried to involve myself in the Ulster Defense Association,” so he knows whereof he speaks. Trust opens in the Rathcoole living room of Geordie and Margaret McKnight, where Geordie and friend Artty are watching the races on TV; Artty’s horse runs third, and Geordie explains that it’s because the jockey “wasn’t allowed to hit the fucker again, even if he needs it. Horses live like kings.” This bottled-up resentment gets loose when friend Trevor pops in hoping Geordie can get him work: Geordie’s out of work himself. Sort of — when Julie tries to talk to Geordie and Artty about a deal she and her B-Special boyfriend, Vincent, want to make, it becomes clear that they have ties to some Loyalist paramilitary group. Margaret, meanwhile, has her own agenda: “our Jake,” as she always calls him, has headaches and doesn’t want to go to school. Geordie wants his adolescent son to grow up in the school of hard knocks, but Margaret’s maternal instincts outweigh her cultural upbringing, and she enlists Trevor to find out who’s tormenting Jake at school — it’s a Protestant school, of course, so we’re not talking Catholics here.

All this is laid out in the tantalizing first act, where we’re never quite sure who’s who and what’s going down. Mitchell’s second act doesn’t quite fulfill that promise: the “deal” goes bad in a predictable way, Margaret’s attempt to help Jake leads to a stabbing and dire consequences, and the dénouement verges on melodrama. Maybe Mitchell’s trying to do too much in a play that clocks in at under two hours. No matter: the dialogue is primal, from Margaret’s “Whatever bastards are annoyin’ him [Jake] are gettin’ away with it, and the teachers are too thick to notice” to Geordie’s description of Belfast High as a “poufy school.” There are enough f-words to fill a David Mamet anthology, but the real f-word here is the frustration of people who don’t have enough to live or love on.

At Súgán, it’s all rendered with chilling authenticity. The McKnights’ living room is just a step up from the Kramdens’: worn sofa, worn upholstered chair, simple table, Racing Post on the floor. The staging includes an ingenious “loft bedroom” scene and the intimation of a car driving into the BCA Theatre. Doug Marsden (Artty), Joseph Zamparelli Jr. (Geordie), and Debra Wise (Margaret) are hard as nails; Billy Meleady (Trevor), his head swiveling like a cobra’s, reveals an unsettling insecurity. As young folks Vincent and Julie, Shawn Sturnick and Helen McElwain seem a little naive, but maybe that’s Mitchell’s point. Only the character of Jake gave me pause: Alex Martinez Wallace paints an accomplished portrait of a pudgy wimp, but if that’s what Mitchell had in mind, this son would be the downfall of almost any family. Or perhaps that too is Mitchell’s point. This play isn’t about politics, it’s about the basics of life. Catholics and Protestants, please copy.

Issue Date: April 26-May 3, 2001