When Made by God Becomes a Warning
1983/84 Granard, County Longford, Ireland as manifest and told to a podcast interviewer early 2018.
Fifteen year-old Ann (McKenna Quigley Harrington) and her boyfriend 18 year-old Mikey (an adept Daniel Marconi) are playful as bear cubs in an underground grotto with a shrine to the Virgin Mary who resembles Our Lady of Guadalupe (Briana Gibson Reeves). “What would you do if I got pregnant?”asks the teenager still wearing her school uniform. She swears it’s a hypothetical question. By that summer, for legitimate fear of condemnation, belief in Catholic sin, and archaic laws, the girl will be dead.
Ann’s story is being related by the adult Michael (Ciaran Byrne, an excellent actor) to Catholic American Eva (Erica Hernandez). The young podcaster has come to Ireland to recover from the suicide of a pregnant teenager who sought counsel at her church. We catch a glimpse of that girl, Isabel (McKenna Quigley Harrington), and her story. As Michael talks, there are intermittent flashbacks to Ann and Mikey, some of which are too long while others raise questions the play never addresses – like the baby’s father. Sequence jerks along.
Eva (Erica Hernandez) and adult Mikey (Ciaran Byrne)
Eva’s own secret reason for immersing herself in the 35 year-old tragedy is telegraphed. Like Ann, she breaks down pleading for guidance not forthcoming. Despite theatrical hysterics, the fate of someone who feels defenseless and damned is barely sympathetic for lack of belief in the characters.
Meanwhile Mary grunts for attention, cracks comments, and sometimes wanders among the other characters, off her altar, being distracting and obtrusive. The idea of her never works.
The Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Act was passed in Ireland in 2018 allowing abortion during the first 12 weeks. Before that time, women were ostracized by communities, thrown out of their homes, red-lettered by churches, and left to fend for themselves unless, relenting, they bore children often without mates or means of support, sometimes by rape or despite illness, wrecking innumerable lives. (Consequences remain wherever laws give women no choice.)
In the program, playwright Ciara Ni Chuirc states, “I wanted to write a play that looks at how sweeping change affects people, particularly those people whose beliefs haven’t changed because society has changed.” Instead, she’s authored a polemic. It would take a weed-wacker to unearth valid narrative inside this dramatization. A pity, as it’s in there.
Director Olivia Songer has created characters with no naturalness or credibility. Women are unnecessarily screechy, Eva a flibbertigibbet. The Virgin Mary seems to have no idea what she’s supposed to be projecting or why she’s physically placed as she is resulting in an uneven surface performance.
Scenic Designer Lindsay Fuori’s grotto is as fake as it can possibly look. Costume Designer Orla Long has chosen to dress the Virgin as if playing comedy in flower patched jeans and a glitter tee shirt with an image of Gualalupe – over which robes are draped. What?!
Sound design/music by Carsen Joenk is effective.
Photos by Carol Rosegg
Opening: Ann (McKenna Quigley Harrington), The Virgin Mary (Briana Gibson Reeves), Mikey (Daniel Marconi)
Irish Repertory Theatre presents
Made by God by Ciara Ni Chuirc
Directed by Olivia Songer
Through March 20, 2022
Irish Repertory Theatre
132 West 22nd Street
