First Performance: Tricycle Theatre (not called Kiln Theatre), London on 5 September 2007; produced by Fishamble: The New Play Company, directed by Jim Culleton
Length: 100 minutes, no interval; 51 pages

In a somewhat familiar format for Barry, we get a play of two monologues about the past - in this case a very personal past of a failed marriage.

Joe and Janet had been reasonably happy on Parnell Street - poor but in love, with 3 boys to show for it and even if Joe was a petty criminal, he was never violent - not on the streets and not at home. Then tragedy struck and one of their boys was killed by a truck. Then, at a night of disappointment for Ireland being defeated in the World Cup, Joe gets violent at home and Janet leaves with the kids. Her story barely changes - she stays with her parents and take care of the children. Joe's get worse - drugs, fights, prison and the death sentence that was the HIV virus in those days.

The play is set in September 1999 - 9 years after the night Joe screwed up and started his downwards spiral. We get the story from both Joe and Janet - each picking up where the other left but without either of them hearing or seeing each other. Janet's story is heartfelt and sincere; Joe is still trying to find a way not to be blamed for his own actions. The play is especially good at showing that - even if the initial act of violence comes as a surprise, the following actions, even the way Joe is talking about all of it now, shows a man who knows he made mistakes but who really does not think he is a bad man (or that he needs to be held responsible). It becomes clear early in the play that Joe is an unreliable narrator - so we often wait to hear Janet's version of events (or even Joe finally admitting the truth).

The story is about a failing marriage but it is also about the people who do not make the news unless they do something really bad - Joe may have been dreaming of a real job but he never had a chance at it so he survived and took care of his family with petty thieving. Was the turn to violence inevitable? Probably (and Janet telling us that when she went to the shelter that night, a lot of other beaten wives were there shows just that part of reality that stays hidden under the surface until it escalates). The loss in Italy was just a reason for the inevitable to happen.

As with most of Barry's work, he inserts real Irish history in the play - and not just with the dashed hopes of the football fans in Italy: both the title and part of the reason why Janet succeeds in leaving when so many wives do not is traced to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 when one of the bombs exploded on Parnell Street - the attack is considered the deadliest one during the Troubles. Her memories of that day and the woman who was there helping the wounded (invented as a far as I know) left a deep impression in the young girl - and her parents' happy marriage did the rest.

For all its serious topics, the play feels almost light. Part of it is the structure - the monologues that just pick up from each other with no interaction almost to the end sound almost staged. It is not the first play in monologues by Barry but unlike earlier one, this one sounds almost artificial. On the other hand, the play is written in the local dialects and in a way the poor barely educated Joe and Janet would speak and I suspect that listening to it (as opposed to reading it) is a lot more powerful - it plays on emotions and they fall a bit short on the page.

In a curious turn of events, I saw another play about a failed marriage the weekend before I read this one: The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown. They are very different plays but I still cannot stop drawing comparisons between them - the similar topic invites it. Both are portraits of failed marriages, both have the two participants in the said images telling us their own version of what happened. Which leads me back to Tolstoy: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". Different times, different countries and the sentiment still stands. ( )