17 January 2012 (Theatre Review)

Star Rating: 3.5/5

Title: 565+
Venue: The Cube
Cast: Marie O'Rourke
Director: Una McKevitt

565+ is the second of Una McKevitt's- to date, three attempts at exploring real life on stage. Exploring personal experience through the mouths of the folk who experienced it, she has cut through the flesh of pretence, the skin and muscle of theatrical convention that covers up the skeleton of truth beneath. But, in going straight for the bone, McKevitt has put a lot of pressure on her amateur source and while we are quickly won over by Marie O'Rourke's sunny side up charm there is a sense that she hasn't been forced to examine herself or her illness in a way that shines much light on depression or how theatre saved her life.

A Louth based school teacher, O'Rourke has seen over 565 plays since 2003, when, after an exhaustive hunt for an interest - taking in all sorts of sailing activities, therapies, clubs and groups - she found the relief she was looking for in theatre. The production never really goes into why. There are sentences here and there that scratch the surface and many funny moments where she reveals the lengths she would go to for a theatrical fix, but while listening to O'Rourke tell her tale, her insatiable thirst doesn't translate. She tells you that Sam Shepard takes her back to a simpler time but never satisfactorily explains why. She mentions the light bulb moment in 2003 when at a performance of Jane Eyre her love affair with theatre began. But her remembrances of the production don't carry the sense of spark that was to ignite an obsessive passion.

But that might be the point. 565+ is more about the end than the means. The upturned christmas tree hints at the disorder and dark that has ruled O Rourke's life, but the disorganised clutter of programmes tossed about the stage compounds the acknowledged fact that O'Rourke's theatre going is a part of her illness. It feeds into the obsessive nature of her disease and leaves her blinkered.

The disease takes control of every aspect of this production in the same subtle way it creeps into every corner of a person's life and while the theatre lover might long to have their passion explored, this wasn't so much a cathartic experience for me, as an expositional one.

Many of the tales told are slight on detail and the projections on the screen are an unnecessary deterent. What one truly wishes is that McKevitt would really push O'Rourke to explore more clearly the relationship between her illness and her perceived cure.

But it's a smarter production than it's more freewheeling presentation lets on.

Review by: Caomhan Keane

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