News location:

Canberra Today 3°/8° | Friday, May 3, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

The play was first class, despite a thick accent

“Howie the Rookie”… Christopher Samuel Carroll gave a tour de force of a performance.
Theatre / “Howie the Rookie”, by Mark O’Rowe, Smith’s Alternative, June 20. Reviewed by ARNE SJOSTEDT. 
“HOWIE the Rookie” is a powerful text, and Irish actor Christopher Samuel Carroll gave a tour de force of a performance.
The play reminded me of a happy combination of “Trainspotting”, “Lock Stock” and “Two Smoking Barrels” and some of the more impressionistic aspects of a James Joyce novel. And there in lies the rub. Delivered with a thick Irish brogue, the audience needed to concentrate hard, and it was difficult to follow the impressionistic word smithery of playwright Mark O’Rowe.
To this end, I applied ample energy to the first half – jumping from each description and thought, emotion and action as Samuel Carroll danced an adroit raver trip with O’Rowe’s script, to the back drop of drummer Steve Fitzgerald’s rhythmic soundscape. It was a marvellous performance, and as art, as poetry, as performance art with poetry – this play was first class.
Come the second act I found it increasingly difficult to follow the plot. I don’t necessarily think this was the fault of the performance, however, I was left asking myself if greater attention could have been given to the fact that such a thick accent made capturing the detail in this Joycian text difficult to an Australian (with only distant Irish heritage). And it is in the detail that the art truly speaks. Yet this was an uncompromising play. Delivered uncompromisingly. Which is perhaps exactly what it needed.

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Review

Review

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Update

Canberra actor John Cuffe dies aged 91

One of the last remaining luminaries from the explosion of professional theatre in Canberra during the 1970s has died after complications from lung cancer. He was 91.

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews