Post by Steve on Feb 28, 2016 11:42:11 GMT
This one hour twenty minute monologue is a desperate intimate searing journey into the soul of a much-abused woman, following her journey from infancy to adulthood.
It features some of the best acting I have EVER seen from Aoife Duffin, who embodies not only the titular (emotionally) half-formed girl, with a charged volcanic immediacy that has to be seen to be believed, but also her neglectful mother, her religion-smothering grandfather, her sick damaged brother, her weasily paedophile uncle, as well as her abusive lovers.
I was a little bothered and bored by the misery porn template, featuring paedophilia, parental abuse, self-hatred, overweaning Irish Catholicism, masochism, etc, etc, which threatens to make even Frank McCourt seem restrained in his plotting (although unlike McCourt, Eimear McBride doesn't claim that this is a true story), but ultimately I gave in to the brilliance of the poetic prose, to the definition of the characters, to Aoife Duffin's startling perfomance, the way she makes every moment now, and every moment true!
McBride is very bold, as she takes on James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" directly, by borrowing his method of growing the prose style as the character grows. But somehow she not only doesn't come up short, but triumphs in creating what I can only call "Portrait of a Young Girl as an Artist," given how artistic, poetic, precise and unsparing are every word choice the girl makes.
This show achieves the status of great art, in that you feel and understand everything of what it is to be in someone else's shoes. And that result is both good and bad for the viewer, in different ways.
4.5 stars! :0
PS: Any award Aoife Duffin is up for, she gets, as far as I'm concerned.
It features some of the best acting I have EVER seen from Aoife Duffin, who embodies not only the titular (emotionally) half-formed girl, with a charged volcanic immediacy that has to be seen to be believed, but also her neglectful mother, her religion-smothering grandfather, her sick damaged brother, her weasily paedophile uncle, as well as her abusive lovers.
I was a little bothered and bored by the misery porn template, featuring paedophilia, parental abuse, self-hatred, overweaning Irish Catholicism, masochism, etc, etc, which threatens to make even Frank McCourt seem restrained in his plotting (although unlike McCourt, Eimear McBride doesn't claim that this is a true story), but ultimately I gave in to the brilliance of the poetic prose, to the definition of the characters, to Aoife Duffin's startling perfomance, the way she makes every moment now, and every moment true!
McBride is very bold, as she takes on James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" directly, by borrowing his method of growing the prose style as the character grows. But somehow she not only doesn't come up short, but triumphs in creating what I can only call "Portrait of a Young Girl as an Artist," given how artistic, poetic, precise and unsparing are every word choice the girl makes.
This show achieves the status of great art, in that you feel and understand everything of what it is to be in someone else's shoes. And that result is both good and bad for the viewer, in different ways.
4.5 stars! :0
PS: Any award Aoife Duffin is up for, she gets, as far as I'm concerned.
