Theatre: Review - Greta Garbo came to Donegal at Tricyle Theatre
HOLLYWOOD is full of beautiful, unattainable women, but Greta Garbo was particularly so.
The actress’s most famous line, “I want to be alone”, rendered still more melancholic by her husky Swedish accent, summed up her wintery persona. She was, a friend once said of her, “a Viking’s child”, a star as brilliant and distant as any in the sky.
This play, conjured out of the fact that Garbo did indeed visit Donegal, is unambiguously a work of fiction. It’s like one of those party game exercises they play in youth drama classes (“Now imagine you’re a misanthropic megastar who has inexplicably arrived at the home of a gregarious Irish family”) but played with Chekhovian patience and craftsmanship.
The Irish family in question, the Hennessys, have fallen on hard times, having lost their way via bad luck and the bottle. Years ago, they sold the house they inherited to an English artist, Matthew Dover, but, in a strange set-up, live on there as his servants (surely not a metaphor for subjugation by the British!). Dover, a friend of sorts of Garbo’s, has invited the celeb to Ireland in the hope that she might buy the house. Meanwhile, young Colette Hennessy (Lisa Diveney) wants to go to university and escape the suffocating wilds of Donegal, but is stymied by the mistakes of her parents. Will goddess-like Garbo set things right?
This is a consummate piece of theatre by a justifiably lauded playwright, but, as with Chekhov – to whom McGuinness is often compared – it sometimes seems too much like a painting, a watercolour landscape severely limited in scope by its context.
Many will admire McGuinness’s flair for funny dialogue and be carried away by his evocation of Garbo’s mystique and the tension in Ireland at the start of The Troubles (a special commendation for the set designer).
But as to if a play like this will have the lasting impact of Chekhov, I’m not convinced.
Until February 20 • 020 7328 1000
JOSH LOEB