Ballyturk – The National Theatre, London

This was the initial reaction to Ballyturk of one of my theatregoing companions, but it essentially sums up most of the reviews I’ve read of Enda Walsh’s play recently staged at the National, having debuted at the Galway International Arts Festival earlier this year.  I read quite a few of said reviews to make sure I wasn’t missing something that would help the play come into focus, but the two most common references made by theatre critics were brought together by Ian Shuttleworth of the Financial Times when he states that “Walsh is Beckett’s heir as an Irish playwright who repeatedly ploughs the same bleak furrow.”

So what was it about, as much as it’s about anything?  There are three characters in the play, 1, 2 and 3.  1 and 2 spend the majority of the play locked in endless cycles of meaningless repetitions of actions, of words, of fears, of acting out the inhabitants of an imaginary town, Ballyturk.  3 comes along later and makes speeches.  The reason for all the Beckett references is that it’s slightly like
Waiting for Godot, if Godot showed up but it really didn’t help at all.  I have no idea if there was any deeper meaning – Walsh is known for works where the notion of the play itself as an endless repetition of words becomes a prison, and where individuals in closed worlds have their reality challenged by a newcomer, but the slight bafflement I felt throughout the play made me search for something more.  Is it about death and the afterlife?  Is it about…  No, I’m out of ideas.

What critics did seem to mostly enjoy about the play was the commitment of Cillian Murphy and Mikel Murfi as 1 and 2.  They seemed to have boundless energy, racing through their routines, leaping onto furniture and keeping up a frenetic tension throughout.  The last time I saw Cillian Murphy onstage he was doing much the same but on his own – racing around a larger stage in a similarly plotted Enda Walsh play, Misterman.  It seems to keep him young, and he’s rather good at it.  The other thing which was not as often mentioned by critics but which I enjoyed was a very evocative turn of phrase on Walsh’s part.  Although the dialogue doesn’t follow a discernible narrative, it’s full of phrases like “trapped and swallowed gutless words” which resonated enough for me to write them down.

The thing is though, I don’t tend to enjoy things which purposefully don’t make sense.  It’s the reason I don’t like David Lynch films, and plan to avoid Harold Pinter plays in future.  I find it arrogant on the part of a playwright or filmmaker to subject an audience to a fixed length of time from which they will ultimately take little but some nice language and solid acting.  It’s not like a picture which you can stand in front of, evaluate, and walk away from it you decide there is no greater message.  I don’t think I will be making it a trilogy of Enda Walsh and Cillian Murphy at the National for that very reason – a little more narrative with my theatre from now on, thank you.