Do You Come From Gomorrah?

Ryan Donaldson in Do You Come From Gomorrah? Image: Ros Kavanagh.

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The Peacock has a proud history as a development space for a new works by new writers. Something many would like to see reinstated on a year round basis. So why is a new play by one of Ireland’s pre-eminent playwrights, Frank McGuinness, premiering there and not in the Big House next door? Well, The Peacock is traditionally a space to experiment, and Do You Come From Gomorrah? finds McGuinness experimenting with the one person format. Also, the smaller, up close and intimate performance is something The Peacock is ideally suited for, and Do You Come From Gomorrah? is as intimate as a secret. Ryan Donaldson as McGuinness’s nameless Man undertaking a punishing journey through dislocated history. McGuinness’s seventy-five minute monologue exploring a Protestant Care Home in Northern Ireland where young boys are sold for sex to British soldiers.

Ryan Donaldson in Do You Come From Gomorrah? Image: Ros Kavanagh.

Heavy on darkness, light on light, Do You Come From Gomorrah? doesn’t scream crowd pleaser. Which is not to suggest it’s a poor play. Rather, it’s one of McGuinness’ strongest and most important plays of recent years. A young boy, his father gone, his mother incapable of caring for him, is sent into institutionalised care. There a series of surrogate fathers and half hearted lovers demean and degrade his identity and body. A homosexual in desperate need of connection preyed upon by soldier Steve who shows him tenderness, the pimp overseer Beastie Billy, and Keith, the boy he loves whose hook handed father is a raging homophobe. Then there’s the officer who sends Man hitting rock bottom. The dark side of suppressed homoeroticism manifesting in permission to commit unspeakable acts in the name of power and domination. Man indoctrinated to deny and serve. To see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, resist no evil. A loyal Loyalist suffering the ultimate humiliation for the cause; reduced to being called an Irishman and abused accordingly. Man with the key to freedom in his hand, but stricken and unable to use it.

Ryan Donaldson in Do You Come From Gomorrah? Image: Ros Kavanagh.

Throughout, McGuinness’ dark themes are smeared with dirtied love and demented horror. Superbly captured in Alyson Cummins claustrophobic, black polished set, etched beautifully by Sinéad McKenna's nocturnal lights. Part slipway, part pier; like a river bed the rear wall often ripples with water projections. The ceiling mirror reinforcing a sense of a watery grave, or drowning. Of dislocation. Of a non-space between performance and identity, past and future, memory and reality, self and other. Structure and language seeing McGuinness taking a calculated risk that pays off for the most part. Language initially swerving towards objective, storytelling journalism in which Man conveys information like a voyeur of his own life, as if describing events that happened to somebody else. Donaldson excellent at making Man’s defensive wall of reported details engaging, along with flourishes from other characters, even as facts and details restrict deeper connection. Till a cross legged moment when language shifts towards deeper confessional. Man’s request to call a failed lover Daddy revealing subjective need and vulnerability. Echoed when he accepts what Keith denies. Resolving a dissonance of memory and truth. Man moving forward, ever cognisant of where he came from, recognising fellow travellers, his defiled dignity never defeated. Director Sarah Baxter navigating the play’s taut tensions with insight and sensitivity, ably supporting Donaldson by knowing when to get out of his way.

Evoking the infamous Kincora Boys’ Home, Do You Come From Gomorrah? reminds us that institutionalised failings in duty of care were not solely the shortcomings of Catholic institutions. That safe places are made unsafe when we reject and degrade those deemed as lesser. Another of our hidden, unspoken histories conveyed through one man’s tortured journey, Do You Come From Gomorrah? delivers a dense, dark, deeply moving experience.

Do You Come From Gomorrah? By Frank McGuinness, runs at The Peacock Stage of The Abbey Theatre until May 16.

For more information visit The Abbey Theatre