King review: Incredibly compelling narrative but something isn’t quite right

KING

Belltable, Limerick

★★★☆☆

Since 2006 Pat Kinevane has been touring with a series of solo works that includes Forgotten, Silent, Underneath and Before. Each of these plays, presented in association with Fishamble Theatre Company, tells the story of those who struggle to exist on the margins of our society, stories, not often told, of lives that are made complex by poverty, loneliness, addiction, failing mental health and a sense of isolated otherness.

In King, Kinevane’s latest work, it is the turn of Luther to tell his story. He is a middle-aged man trying to hold his life together against the odds, beating away the demons in his head, fighting the stigma of mental illness while trying to survive with little or no support from the state.

It is a bleak and frightening existence, and the overall design of this production reinforces that bleakness. On an almost empty stage Luther clearly has nothing, and there is almost nothing left of value in his life except a few fragile threads he is clinging to for as long as possible.

As usual, Kinevane makes an incredibly compelling and poignant narrative from these threads. As a writer and performer, Kinevane is a poet laureate of the even-less-than-ordinary man and woman, those who are mostly unseen and unheard, but there is a sense with King in which the overall production doesn’t quite sustain the weight of its own emotion. Something isn’t quite right.

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In the absence of a more natural flow there is an overdependence on the Argentinian tango as an endlessly repeated device through which Luther conveys his deepest emotions, but it is not always clear what exactly these emotions are, to the extent that its use, without apparent meaning, becomes irritating. There is a feeling with King (which is directed for Fishamble by Jim Culleton, with a creative team that includes Denis Clohessy, Pius McGrath and Catherine Condell, with choreography by Kristina Chaloir and Julian Brigatti) that things have yet to fully come together, and this may diminish with time.

At one point Kinevane disappears offstage entirely, which is decidedly odd in a one-man show, and breaks his connection with the audience. This emotional trust takes time to build again, and time is a luxury in a production of barely 80 minutes.

There is no questioning the sincerity of this work, but whether this very familiar format of Kinevane’s can continue much longer and whether, at this point, it best serves the talents of both Kinevane and the company has to be considered.

King is touring to Town Hall Theatre, Galway, on Wednesday, March 1st; An Grianán, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, on Saturday, March 4th; then Longford, Portlaoise, Dún Laoghaire, Tralee, Kilkenny and Waterford