Fair Deal

Caroline Menton, Garrett Lombard and Aislín McGuckin in Fair Deal. Image: Ros Kavanagh

***

Tinder toy boy, the objectify-able Rio, luxuriates on a pull out sofa bed. Meanwhile, flustered Keira is urging his perfectly chiselled body to get dressed and leave her house. But Rio wants to indulge in endless small talk and unnecessary oversharing. A hallmark of Una McKevitt’s dark comedy Fair Deal. Resembling a postcoital conversation that prattles on when it really should be making you breakfast. Still, it’s easy on the eyes and provides enough good giggles to not want to throw it out of bed.

Jack Weise in Fair Deal. Image: Ros Kavanagh

Mostly, though, we listen. Monologues of misery and expositional explanations piling up and slowing things down. Keira’s dying Uncle in the upstairs bedroom moving to a nursing home the following day. The house left to Caroline Menton’s Kiera, by her golf loving grandmother. To be sold to pay for her Uncle’s residential costs. Only when Jack Weise’s Rio is hurled bodily from the house do laughs properly get going with the arrival of a second Uncle, Daragh. Garrett Lombard brilliant as a mediocre thespian suffering bouts of insecure vanity. Who, like the sensational Aislín McGuickin as Kiera’s maternally void mother, conceals a multitude of textual sins. An American real estate celebrity, Mommy dearest Sandra arrives with the irresistible force of frostbite, determined to stop the sale of the house for unconvincing reasons. Eventually taking the bull by the horns with a neat plot twist. Some clever, and long overdue physical action reviving Fair Deal’s flagging energies. Only for more trudging arguments, monologues and exposition to follow. The return of Rio, serving up a second shot of the defibrillator, sees everything explode into utter zaniness. Shoehorning in some violent showdowns before the ending staggers across the finish line in a dampened blaze whilst quoting Shakespeare.

Caroline Menton and Garrett Lombard in Fair Deal. Image: Ros Kavanagh

Throughout, Fair Deal throws everything at the comic wall hoping something will stick. And some things do stick, just not enough of them. Economy, timing, and set up mostly absent in McKevitt’s heavily trudging text. Where McKevitt succeeds is in two exceptional comic characters, albeit one dimensional, who shine through their excesses. Lombard’s Daragh, a painfully recognisable, self obsessed actor seen portrayed countless times before. Lombard milking the long running joke for all its worth and never coming up short. Complementing McGuckin’s sinister Sandra, a woman of stylish, sexy ruthlessness. Strutting around in Joan O’Cleary’s white trousers and blouse doing things Miranda’s Prada wearing devil would cringe at. Under Conall Morrison’s direction, Fair Deal takes a Carry On Up The Arsenic and Old Lace route. Morrison’s old school staging best during over the top moments in which McGuckin and Lombard shine. Leaving Menton mostly adrift as the proverbial straight support, along with Weise who has little enough to do. The production’s other star being Liam Doona’s detailed set littered with elderly paraphernalia, superbly lit by Eoin Winning.

Garrett Lombard and Aislín McGuckin in Fair Deal. Image: Ros Kavanagh

Some will forgive Fair Deal’s comic and narrative shortcomings for the inconsistent laughs it generates. Others will see it as an underwhelming, over talking, series of hit and miss comic moments masquerading as a play. One in serious need of more physical comedy; best when it overplays the implausible. Even if that means sacrificing its serious aspirations to explore family, power dynamics, societal structures or inherited responsibilities as outlined in the programme like a thesis proposal. Against which Fair Deal falls considerably short. Fair Deal succeeding best when played for laughs. For which it has Lombard and McGuckin to thank. Both being simply hilarious.

Fair Deal, by Una McKevitt, runs at The Peacock Stage of The Abbey Theatre until March 28.

For more information visit The Abbey Theatre