REVIEW BY JUDY MURPHY

The Table; Branar @ the Town Hall Theatre

Chickens play a central role in Branar’s new play The Table, offering a comic foil to the tragedy that unfolds in the Ó Flatharta family as this once-united home becomes divided over the fate of their most treasured possession.

Denounced as stupid one minute, the fowl seem peculiarly intelligent the next. They appear in exquisite formation, clucking and dropping eggs for the household, while being cossetted by Mick, a gormless youth whose job it is to mind them.

Telling complex stories to children in an accessible and dramatic fashion is something Branar has been doing for more than 20 years, with music, lighting and set-design integral to its creations.

The Table continues in that vein, as the dark, difficult subject of Ireland’s Civil War is brought home to young audiences in a way that’s relatable and multi-layered.

The Ó Flatharta family own the table that’s at the centre of this play, but it’s no ordinary table. It was carved from a legendary oak tree that their landlord’s ancestor had chopped down – just because he could. The majestic oak, which gave their townland its name and knew all its stories, had huge significance for local people. And the table which it subsequently became, retained that importance through the generations.

The Ó Flathartas’ hatred of their landlord is rooted in that act of vandalism by his ancestor and is compounded by the exorbitant rent he charges them for their smallholding.  The young adult children Líam, Peg, Siobhán and Mick, (Bob Kelly, Martha Dunlea, Grace Kiely and Eoin O Dubhghaill) express varying degrees of anger about this, while their widowed mother Bridget (Helen Gregg) has learned stoicism.

For more, read this week’s Galway City  Tribune.

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