Cyprus Avenue
Written by David Ireland
Directed by Vicky Featherstone
The Public Theatre
June 9, 2018
Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5.
The baby is going to die. Don’t treat this as a spoiler to the play. From the very first moment when the baby is handled a bit too objectively – – you KNOW it doesn’t stand a chance – – – and for ninety terrible – beautiful and outrageously acted moments – we play out the inevitable tragedy. What made this play a bit brutal from the start was how close it plays through mental illness, depression and even suicide. Just days ago we lost Kate Spade and Andrew Bourdain. The world has just become too dangerous, too private, and too painful to take personal tragedy this casually!
The play puts a handful of a handful of actors on a large white carpet with two pieces of white furniture. Again, you just KNOW that none of this is going to stay white forever. The play does many things beautifully. It takes the idea of racism and cracks it open. What does it mean to be Irish and claim not be Irish but Protestant Irish and hate the Catholic Irish – I mean, after all, aren’t all of you “leprechaun chasers Irishmen”? These are fighting words in this play – and I mean fighting! It gets so hard to tell the the good guys from the bad guys when to the outsider they look the same. the world sees you as the same. Years and years of hate play out – play out even in the eyes of your children. In fact, you don’t WANT to have a world without this prejudice because it is this very prejudice – this very anger that give you identity. This is black comedy at it’s best! Most cultural myths involve the slaughter/sacraife of the innocent – the ewe, the virgin, the clean and enchaste – here a baby in thrown into the theatrical pyre.
The play shocks and offends everyone. It just hates people – and explores what happens one day when a bit of doubt about your family tree creeps into your thinking and then asks how badly you want to pull of those roots and get the weeds into the garbage bags!!!