Brú Theatre’s latest production NOT A WORD nobly and originally unearths an oft-forgotten detail in Irish immigrant history, but its lack of clarity unfortunately mutes its central message.
Brú Theatre’s latest production NOT A WORD nobly and originally unearths an oft-forgotten detail in Irish immigrant history, but its lack of clarity unfortunately mutes its central message.
A featured production in this year’s MimeLondon festival, the piece examines the private life of an Irish railway navvy. The navvies (short for “navigational engineers” or “navigators”) were a group of labourers, namely from the British Isles, who were responsible for building England’s largest public works projects. These communities – roughly thirty percent of which were made up of Irish immigrants – dug canals, railways, and tunnels across Victorian Britain. Their contribution to Great Britain’s social and economic growth throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries was immense. Unfortunately, it is also a history that remains quite buried.
For many Irish immigrants, becoming a navvy presented a means of escaping famine and economic decline back home. However, the working conditions of the navvies were extremely dangerous and very few made it back to Ireland. Combined with unsanitary living conditions, death rates reached as high as 500 a year. Additionally, Victorian society was quick to cast the navvy communities as a foil to the prim and proper city folk, spreading false claims about their general lawlessness and debauchery (even though there is still no evidence to back up those claims).
In this way, NOT A WORD is a fiercely relevant story at a time when anti-immigrant narratives abound, putting at risk the very communities that make these countries function. Without the navvies, there is little doubt that the Industrial Revolution would have been far less of a revolution than it ultimately was. Great Britain would not be what it is today. It is a success, in and of itself, that Brú Theatre Company has brought this story to light at the Barbican.
That said, very little of the aforementioned history would be clear to an audience member who wasn’t already familiar with it. Perhaps it’s sufficient that theatre makes its audiences curious enough to research more about the story after the show, as I did. Though, I’m also aware that I had the not-so-universal task of writing this review and therefore had to do that research. I am glad I now know more about the Irish railway navvies, but I can’t say that that is largely a result of NOT A WORD. Overwhelmingly one-noted and melancholic, this piece clearly wants to resonate after the lights come back on, but remains stuck in the muddy bog of avant-garde performance.
Some elements are standouts. The mask worn by Raymond Keane and created by Orla Clogher is the most unique part of the show. It is a real shock when Keane seemingly goes to “shave” his indecipherable beard in the mirror… and then shaves off real clay! One wonders what effect it might have on an actor to wear a blob of wet earth on his head for a whole hour. Keane makes it look effortless.
The indistinguishable features of the mask and the material of the wet clay create an ingenious symbol of all the unacknowledged navvies who were literally and figuratively consumed by the English earth, eventually fading from common knowledge. This man has no identity but rather represents the collective identity of all his fellow navvies.
The mask also impresses what seems to be the overarching design idea of the production – that of Genesis: “for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.” The set and lighting design create a sorrowful, yet beautiful sense of a grave out of the protagonist’s earth-stained shanty. Every surface is smeared in dust, making his few special belongings – a couple vinyl records, a silver butter dish, a gray suit – pop out from his squalid environment.
That said, there were still too many elements that seemed misplaced or not fully incorporated. Live musician Ultan O Brien did a tremendous job underscoring the piece whilst onstage. However, the music was one-noted throughout, and it was frustratingly unclear whether Keane and O Brien were aware of each others’ presence. There were a few almost-interactions between them, but it would have been less distracting had there been a clearer directorial choice there.
The ultimate function of the mask beyond a symbol was also cause for confusion. At the end, after violently clawing all the clay off the mask’s base, Keane’s character slowly removes the mask to an intense electronic musical underscore. He places it on the ground and then, bearing his own clay-stained face, walks “outside” the house, looks in through the window, and then exits. Perhaps a general nod to the “fading away” of the Irish navvies, the moment lacked dramatic significance, because it wasn’t clear what had changed by his removal of the mask. The predominant feeling upon exiting the theatre soon afterward was that of melancholy mixed with confusion, more than any exciting link between our lives and those of the Irish navvies’.
Theatre should make us curious about history, and specifically the histories of the countless (now invisible) individuals that helped make the world we all live in today. While NOT A WORD revives the very relevant history of the navvies, its lack of cohesive elements muddies the powerful connection it could have made with its audience.