Park Theatre, London – until 5 February 2022
Reviewed by Debra Stottor
4****
Northern Ireland 2019. Stormont shut down for a third year running. Rising paramilitary shootings. Brexit looming. Finally, the decriminalisation of abortion. Tumultuous times, even for a region that seems to have specialised in tumultuous times. And not necessarily the most obvious backdrop for a play as filled with humour as this. The humour serves as a counterpoint to the darker elements of the story, and this is a thought-provoking play that will make you laugh and cry.
The narrative plays with time and switches between the telling of the story and the story itself, tripping up the viewer and making them consider the importance of the person telling the story.
So where does the story start, and where does it begin? Is it September 2019? May 2019? Or does it all go back to Bloody Sunday, a fateful day in 1972 that had a far-reaching effect on brother and sister Conor and Niamh and their family? The repercussions of that day were still being felt in 2019, as it was announced that an ex-paratrooper, ‘Soldier F’, would be tried for the murders of two of those that died in the massacre. The region’s complex history interweaves with a twisting plot to give us a sense of how normal people dealing with far from normal situations. No leprachauns, no dancing, no whiskey, but a tale told with humanity, humour and understanding.
This is a reworked version of the play that enjoyed its first run at the VAULT Festival in 2020, and on the small Park Theatre stage, minimal props are moved around the stage by the cast between scenes, scaffolding multitasking as a bus stop, a washing line and a supermarket aisle. It’s simple and effective, if a little obtrusive.
Presented by Plain Heroines, a female-led theatre company that, in their own words ‘makes funny plays about difficult subjects’, The 4th Country was written by co-founder Kate Reid, also one of the four-person Irish and Northern Irish cast along with Cormac Elliott, Aoife Kennan and Rachael Rooney. The Park Theatre. The play was a finalist for the Charlie Hartill Award 2020. Direction is by Gabriella Bird, co-artistic director of Plain Heroines and Creative Associate at Jermyn Street Theatre.