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Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Mikel Murfi.
Cast: Denis Conway, Tadhg Murphy, Garrett Lombard, Mercy Ojelade
Description: Mikel Murfi directs Enda Walsh's comic drama about the inhabitants of a council flat on Walworth Road in London. Starring Denis Conway, Tadhg Murphy, Garrett Lombard and Mercy Ojelade.
Times: Oct 22-25, 27-29, Nov 14 & 15, 17-20, 26-29, 7.30pm, mats Oct 25, 28, Nov 15, 18, 27, 29, 2.30pm, ends Nov 29
Price: £10-£29, concs available
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
Phone: 0207452 3000
Website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Crazy people: Sean (Tadhg Murphy), Dinny (Denis Conway) and Blake (Garrett Lombard) play their younger selves and also key members of their extended family
Take several chunks of Martin McDonagh and stir vigorously into an Anglo-Irish setting. Add in essence of Theatre of the Absurd, slithers of Black Farcical Comedy and two tablespoonfuls of Expressionism. Flavour lavishly with spirit of Joe Orton and Jean Genet. Drizzle in a touch of déjà vu, Pirandello and gothic nightmare. Serve to gullible Anglo-American audiences, boosting the dish as a feast of hyper-nouvel-cuisine that will linger on palates for days.
You may gather why I find it difficult to echo the enthusiastic reception for this Druid Theatre production of Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce, seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year and recently in New York. Mikel Murfi’s chronically boisterous production remains true to the title with its characterising notes of grotesquerie. Yet a sombre, deadpan style, rather than one redolent of The Three Stooges, would have been more provocative and challenging.
The scene is confined to a seedy Walworth Road council flat whose walls have lost most of their plasterboard. The eye is held by two cardboard coffins, one used as an ironing board by a young man who slips into women’s clothes and several women’s wigs. An elderly recording of An Irish Lullaby resounds. Shoe polish assumes dramatic importance.
Three men, 50-year-old Dinny and his twentysomething sons, Sean and Blake, are trapped in fantasy-land and more than a little out of their minds. They appear obsessed with performance, with re-enacting crucial scenes from their earlier life in Ireland. Or do they make it all up? They play not just their younger selves but also key members of their extended family, people whose identities I could not fathom until I read the text later. At last a young woman arrives to threaten the introspective mood.
Walsh’s crazy, flippant, amoral tone, borrowed from Martin McDonagh, is nicely suggested by the weird dialogue “They set fire to a nun.” “She frightened the life out of them. She was put out, wasn’t she eventually?”
This is a no-man’s land, where the characters remain semi-detached from reality and float free from morality. Walsh remains boringly intent on making his haunted people farcical crazies. He drags them for no justified reason to a melodramatic finale. Denis Conway’s casual psychopath Dinny, Garrett Lombard’s Blake in various dresses and Tadhg Murphy’s weirdo Sean surprisingly raised much first night laughter.
Until 29 October (020 7452 3000).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I saw this last night and absolutely loved it. The fact Mr De Jongh didn't understand who the characters were seems to have destroyed his chance of him appreciating it. In my opinion the acting is pure brilliance. The content of the play is darkly funny and your mind is challenged throughout to make sense of the twists and turns that unfold at a bewildering pace. I would recommend it to anyone who likes to think while watching theatre.
- Rob, London
There's been a lot of hype and gush about this play. I have to agree with the one star rating here, the Walworth Farce was all one note - hysterical. Its fast, convoluted plot and all the frantic dashing about gave me a headache, I was glad to come out of the theatre and into the rain.
- Derek, London
