The Black Wolfe Tone

Kwaku Fortune in The Black Wolfe Tone: Image, Carol Rosegg

***

By all accounts an extremely likeable individual, Kwaku Fortune has been a fixture on the scene for some time now. Popping up regularly on stage and screen, often in supporting roles. Fortune at risk of slip sliding into becoming the eternally supporting character actor. Begging the question can Fortune carry a lead, seeing as how his recent performance in The Haircut left the jury hung? Does he have greater things to offer? Fishamble: The New Play Company reckon he has; being prepared to put their reputation where their mouth is. His debut play, The Black Wolfe Tone, written and performed by Fortune, answering the preceding questions with a resounding yes. Fortune can write. He can carry a lead, exuding huge charisma and a commanding presence. Even if, in this instance, he’s poorly served by director Nicola Murphy Dubey.

Like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, if told by the cuckoo, woe is Kevin, the only sane man in the asylum. Just ask him, he’ll tell you. Indeed, that’s all he does. For Kevin is never not talking about himself, even as he touches on a range of topics and themes. A bipolar black Irish man with psychotic tendencies, Kevin has been sectioned but won’t tell you why. Instead, he recites a litany of reasons to explain and complain as to why he is the way he is so he won’t have to face what he is. God. Nature. Nurture. Parents. Acid. Racism. Masculinity. History. Add your own protected category. Kevin certainly has things to cry about, but the constant self-justification soon becomes monotonous. All denial, projection and avoidance, which everyone can see apart from Kevin. Trying hard to convince himself, in advance of a deciding meeting, that he’s ready to be discharged, Kevin recounts the debris of his life like a hard sell infomercial cranked up on excitement. The play's title echoing his sense of identity as an inside outsider. Yet five minutes spent in his excitable presence and you know Kevin isn’t fit to be released. Creating flaccid narrative tension compounded by Kevin evoking less sympathy so much as the urge to lock him up and throw away the key, if only to shut him up for five minutes.

Kwaku Fortune in The Black Wolfe Tone: Image, Carol Rosegg

Like being bawled out by a bombastic drill instructor, Fortune’s script suffers trauma and traumatises on account of Fortune’s blistering, go big delivery. Subtlety, nuance, rhythm and pacing all sacrificed by director Nicola Murphy Dubey for a semaphoring, declamatory style that even Shakespeare would have asked be taken down a notch. Starting high, Fortune has nowhere to go, and nowhere to take you. Emotional pyrotechnics resulting in emotional white noise. By the time quietness hits, allowing Kevin see himself as others might see him, you’re apt to be too numb to notice. Though compositionally strong, utilising superbly synchronised lights by Adam Honoré and an institutionalised set by Maree Kearns, Murphy Dubey fails to get to grips with the script’s richness to evoke a deeper understanding of Kevin’s bipolar disorder and his refusal to accept the consequences, relying on shouted mania coming at you like a relentless tornado. Leaving you battening down the hatches as the next outburst arrives. Knowing Fortune could have done so much more had he done so much less.

For people suffering bipolar disorder, and those living with them, the unmanaged condition is often terrifying and frightening. Medication involving constant adjustment and tweaks with often horrendous side effects. Here, the dangers are focused on shouting and violence. The end risking bipolar disorder looking like a curable illness once we admit to it. Yet in Fortune’s script, if not his performance, there’s a sense that what we see is not the whole story. Should Fortune go to those softer places he writes of, revealing rather than hiding Kevin’s vulnerability behind a wall of shouted justifications, a whisper might be enough to devastate. The words are there. So is the actor. As it stands, Kevin is a howling demon that doesn’t want to be exorcised. Fishamble backing The Black Wolfe Tone might not take home the Gold Cup, but it crosses the finish line and positions nicely. Fortune's visceral immediacy and smart writing, peppered with spoken word ingredients, confirming Fishamble have backed a long term winner. Originally debuting in New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre, The Black Wolfe Tone embarks on an Irish tour. Catch it to see a potential star in the making.

The Black Wolfe Tone, written and performed by Kwaku Fortune, presented by Fishamble: The New Play Company is currently on tour.

Project Arts Centre - June 4 - 14

Mermaid Arts Centre - June 17 and 18

Cork Midsummer Festival - June 20 and 21

For more information, visit Fishamble: The New Play Company