Ross and Rachel

Amilia Keating in Ross and Rachel. Image uncredited.

****

It's said not even a great actor can rescue a weak play. Amilia Keating might beg to differ. In James Fritz's curious character study, Ross and Rachel, a solid idea married to humorous turning points gets bogged down in too much vagueness and too many big asks. Keating's energised performance injecting Fritz's troubled script with bolts of lightning. The unsteady monster stumbling around in the dark; Keating ensuring it stays upright. Fritz's dark comedy wanting to make you laugh and cry, but only managing to do the former.

A one woman duologue, Fritz's blurred script proves heavy on generalisations. In which Keating shifts bravely, if unclearly at times, between two loosely sketched characters relaying dim details about their marriage with children and life in their forties. Let's call them Ross and Rachel. If the reference suggests a perfect couple meant to be together forever, it's overworked and undercooked. He's a possessive professor in love with his sister's friend destined to be his everything, his one trope mantra, "she belongs to me." She eventually becomes his obliging wife only to find him boring and herself on the verge of a work affair. Amidst the vapid padding that passes for their relationship matters take a turn when Ross becomes ill. Pushing him to ask Rachel a question to which everyone in the universe already knows the answer. By the time the final image arrives you might accept it in principle, but don't buy it in practice. Ross and Rachel, having earned its laughs, not having earned its pathos.

Amilia Keating in Ross and Rachel. Image uncredited.

Less a study of possessiveness, Ross and Rachel is more an interrogation of blinded loneliness. Of what it means to be in a relationship where there's the relationship first, then the partner, and coming in a distant third the person. Who either marvels at how wonderful life is, or wonders how the hell they got there? Fritz's taut, looping script failing to state either case convincingly. Observationally vague, snappily written and cleverly structured, with more allusions to Friends than is probably healthy, why Rachel married Ross, let alone stayed with him is never convincingly sold. Showing weak traumatic tension, comic moments land more solidly. Rachel's flashes of emotional honesty not enough to warrant real, dramatic investment.

What elevates Ross and Rachel is Keating's invigorating performance. Like Howie The Rookie, merging monologues confuse initially and several details remain unclear (child or children?). Keating injecting humour, insight, and emotional integrity to fill in the empty spaces. Lee Coffey's direction ensuring pace, timing and energy keep the home fires crackling. Kevin Murphy's economy of lights and Jack Rogers' soapbox set adding minimal, but perfectly accentuated support as Keating paces, prowls, crouches, cowers, cries out and carries off a minor miracle. Fashioning Fritz's underwhelming script into an overwhelmingly enjoyable experience.

Just as a stopped clock calls the right time twice a day, Ross and Rachel has its moments of truth. The rest of the day it twaddles along asking us to believe in a scenario it never convincingly sells. We compensate with personal projections, but it's not enough. In the end do we really believe what Rachel expresses in that final, poignant moment? Do we really care? Most likely a 'not entirely' to the first question, and a reluctant 'yes' to the second. But only because Keating makes us care with an impassioned performance.

Ross and Rachel by James Fritz, presented by Bitter Like A Lemon, runs at The Civic Theatre, Tallaght until September 26th.

For more information visit The Civic Theatre