Helen & I

Druid returned to the Dublin Theatre Festival with a heavyweight cast and director tackling a new play by Meadhbh McHugh.

Helen is Cathy Belton, and the ‘I’ is Rebecca O’Mara’s Lynne; who we first meet nervously plastering on make-up in the kitchen where she is waiting to meet her estranged sister as they keep a vigil over their dying father. Their nervous rapprochement is complicated by the arrival first of Lynne’s husband Tony (Paul Hickey), and then Helen’s daughter Evvy (Seána O’Hanlon’s).

This feels in thrall to Tom Murphy’s ouevre, most particularly the paralysing grip of the past which can simultaneously not be acknowledged in Bailegangaire, but never truly catches fire. Perhaps it was an unfortunate coincidence of casting that led to an unwarranted feeling of a perfectly good play not quite achieving the heights of greatness: Belton and O’Mara having previously played estranged sisters keeping a vigil over their dying father in Aristocrats at the Abbey in 2014.

Belton dominates the stage, conveying the emotional meltdown Helen endures in a sweltering Galway summer, but this feels like it could have been more than it is.

3/5