“The audience clearly enjoyed the drama and as a first play this is a success. I look forward to seeing what Reid does next.“
Julia Newbould
Three Irish whiskeys
KXT on Broadway
Sydney
3 – 18 May 2024
Misery Loves Company is a fun little invitation into an Irish wake set in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles” in the late 1970s. Being buried is Daphne, mother to Jackie, daughter to George, sister to Dolores and Henry and aunt to Niamh, Cecilia and Ernie. Daphne is remembered as the lesbian swing dancer who collected brooches – cue jibes and prejudices.
Playwright Isabella Reid is a student and aspiring writer who wrote the first script of the play for her year 12 drama major work in 2022. After staying with family in Ireland, her experience with Irish culture and history shaped the work into what it is today. The result is certainly very Irish and authentically so.
The drama takes place in the living room of the Glynne family – the site of the wake. Whiskey and beer have been purchased, and tea is being made in readiness for the occasion. Reid says the title is drawn from her feeling that being miserable in company is a good thing. “It is definitely easier to overcome hurt and pain when you don’t have to do it alone,” she says.
Reid has chosen her characters well and their relationships play out well but perhaps there is a little too much going on. There is the father of the deceased who has dementia, his carer Jasper, and there are the deceased’s two siblings – Dolores (mother of Niamh) and Henry (father of Ernie and Cecilia). There is fighting between the two cousins Niamh and Cecilia, attraction between Jasper and Cecilia, conflict between Dolores and Jackie and Henry has stolen the cash box from a taxi he was meant to pay. Dolores is also perpetually on the hunt for
a man, any man. There is also a bard Gus (played by Lincoln Elliot) dressed as a minstrel and playing the accordion to lead the Irish singing
Misery Loves Company takes the idea of a funeral bringing characters together to work out their relationships with the deceased and with each other. The play is light-hearted and entertaining but it lacks depth. The backdrop of The Troubles was somewhat wasted. There was a sentence, played for laughs, about a house burning down not through bombing but through a kitchen mishap. There is skill in Reid’s dialogue with comedic touches appearing in all scenes garnering lots of laughs from the audience.
The actors work easily with the script with standouts being Michael Yore as local priest Father John, and Annie Stafford as Jackie, the deceased’s daughter. Father John sets the scene and acts as narrator at other times. The females and their relationships seem to work best, while Pa, Henry and Ernie are a little sketchier but perhaps the most authentic interactions between the younger characters – the fighting between Cecilia and Niamh and the romance between Niamh and Jasper.
Director Matthew Lee orchestrated some great actions, particularly the scene enacted in slow motion where Father John is hit with a box being thrown across the room. There is also a drunk/devil-possessed scene where Clay Crighton as Ernie is almost acrobatic across the stage. The dialect coach did a wonderful job with the cast’s Northern Irish accents – they were spot on.
The audience clearly enjoyed the drama and as a first play this is a success. I look forward to seeing what Reid does next.
Julia Newbould, Theatre Now
