EUGENE O’Brien, the man behind ‘Pure Mule’, really hit gold with this sensitive play of a love story undone, ‘Eden’. His first, written ten years ago and staged by The Abbey Theatre, ‘Eden’ won Best New Play at The Irish Times Theatre Awards and ditto Stewart Parker Awards.
The production touring now is brought to us by the Galway based Decadent Theatre in association with their local art centre and Roscommon’s. It comes to Lime Tree Theatre on Friday October 18, one night only for 8pm.
O’Brien himself is from Edenderry which could be the Eden invoked here, a small town in Ireland where the marital troubles of Billy (Patrick Ryan of ‘Trivia’, ‘Pure Mule’) and Breda (Lesley Conroy, ‘Mattie’). Truly, it is anywhere, a universal cradle for love undone.
Over the course of a weekend, we follow Billy – and his fantasy for a friend’s daughter – on a pub trail while his wife, having had their second child, joins him on her first night on the town in some time. She is desperate for a return to intimacy; all that Billy can see is his chance with 18-year-old Imelda Egan.
Meeting “a colourful gallery of characters” along the way, there’s a particularity to the language, the pubs and exchange that gives ‘Eden’ a poignancy beyond the common. He is naive and evasive; she, filled with fearful longing.
Decadent Theatre was founded in The White House bar in Limerick by director Andrew Flynn, along with others with whom he trained at LSAD. Here in Spring with bloody wonderful ‘A Skull in Connemara’, you can book for the return visit at Lime Tree Theatre box office, Mary Immaculate College.
