by Rose Rushe
JOHN Godber mined a place in our hearts with the frantic hurly-burly of ‘Bouncers’. Brilliant, happy-sad, truthful, Orchard Theatre Company’s edition, directed by Simon Thompson, was as big a crowd pleaser as Island’s many a year back.
Now Changing Times theatre company has taken up ‘Happy Families’, an autobiographical play by Godber that documents his estrangement from family in his independent adulthood.
“It is hilarious,” says artistic director Jean Fay of this work which was cast by Changing Times as far back as December.
Yet a superficial glance suggests otherwise. John (St Munchin’s Aidan Kelly) looks back as a recent university graduate, a status that “is something unusual for a working class family. John does not fit in any more, has nothing in common, has gone off and made something better for himself”.
At a price. Older now, he is agitated, frustrated. His remembering back to childhood days puts Fay in mind of TV’s ‘The Royle Family’, ”with three conversations going on at the same time, and some people not listening”. John’s parents, Dot and Vic (Jacqui Ryan and Graham Courage) embarrass him, “the car his father drives, the cheap old suit he wears to the graduation”.
There is a sadder distance still with the demise of loved grandparents.
Godber’s comedy lies in revealing flashbacks and incidents that jolt with familiarity. “Laughs? The laughs are all over the place, in family scenes, in John being thrown out of school. Dialogue is very fast paced and some of the play is physical”.
Jean Fay has moved the action to an Ireland telescoped from the mid 1960s to late ’70s. Book for this lovely show at Millennium Theatre, March 19 to 22, 8pm online in advance at www.litmt.ie
