In some aspects Belfry is the great flowering of Billy Roche’s Trilogy, although it is gilding the lily to associate it with a quarter of a century: its famous debut was 22 years ago in the Bush Theatre, with the same cast transferring to the old Theatre Royal, although the older Handful of Stars was premiered in London exactly 25 years ago, but only after an earlier incarnation at Wexford Arts Centre.
The popular definition of the Trilogy -A Handful of Stars, Poor Beast in the Rain and, finally, Belfry – arises from the Bush Theatre performance of all three in London, with a phenomenal cast, which transferred memorably to Wexford. But 20 years ago.
Anachronisms aside, this production is a worthy addition to the canon, and it was a master stroke to get an actor of the stature of Andy Doyle, a veteran director of Roche’s work, to step into Des McAleer’s shoes as Artie.
On reflection, Belfry is the odd one out in the Trilogy: in theme and execution, it is more epic in its confinement. The later Cavalcaders has much more in common with A Handful of Stars and Poor Beast in the Rain.
It is thought that Billy had the late Tony Doyle in mind when he created Terry, but he has always known that both Terry and Artie require big actors, physically and in every other sense.
Andy Doyle is such an actor: the part requires presence but deftness, authority with a soft heart. He is the anchor at the centre of world slowly falling apart, beset by the Homeric themes of betrayal, retribution and redemption. His timing is the play’s pulse.
The Wexford Drama Group production takes needless liberties: scenes are unnecessarily segued repeatedly by the doleful notes of Ave Maria, and the play is bookended by the saccharine wedding favourite Pachelbel’s Canon in D.
Plays like Belfry and A Handful of Stars work best when there is a pregnant pause between scenes, to accentuate the dramatic, and I’m sure if Billy Roche wanted tear jerker music in between, he would have indicated thus in his stage directions. Instead, he concludes Belfry with just two words: ‘Lights down’, succinct, like Beckett. Roche can stun an audience into silence with words. The text doesn’t need special effects.
Artie tells the audience that Dominic has run away from an ‘industrial’ school, but the word ‘industrial’ isn’t in the play. Belfry is staged in pre-Ferns Report Wexford, and perhaps the desire was to update it. But an industrial school, in the wake of theRyan Report, has more sinister connotations: sexual abuse. In the play, the unspoken fear of Dominic should be perceived as being shared by his priest. Both are, in a sense, orphaned, craving what they are clearly denied.
Roche is a playwright for whom, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, the word is the thing, a writer who racked his brains for months before deciding on the title Belfry, a writer who is able to spot the connection between the younger Jimmy Brady and an older Artie.
However, times have changed, and the Wexford of the trilogy, ‘a small town in Ireland’, no longer exists.
This Belfry does succeed on other levels: it has unearthed a brilliant new talent in Jack Matthews, scatterbrained with a scatter-gun delivery; Chris Hayes is a tormented Fr. Pat who is episodically tortured and, as Angela and Donal, Nicola Roche and Tommy Murphy are the building blocks of a marriage on the verge of a breakdown. But Belfry is all about Artie O’Leary, the first Billy Roche character to address the audience directly, and Andy Doyle becomes the light in ‘the queer old whispering world’ of a church vestry and belfry.
Stage design by Mark Redmond is near perfect, the direction by Paul Walsh is evenly paced, but I wouldn’t hesitate to ditch both Bach and Pachelbel.
