Masterclass

With just two armchairs and a pot-plant, it starts as a talkshow. A starstruck nerd interviews a self-satisfied writer infamous for his minimal and cliched female characters, the misogynist violence of his stories and his own abusive behaviour backstage. The pursuit of Truth, says our great male artist, is the only contest.

New York performer Adrienne Truscott plays our Hemingway-like antihero, scrappily disguised with moustache, wig and eventually a shotgun.  He describes the virtues of a good masculine narrative and for a reading enlists our enthusiastic interviewer who’s only too keen to play the woman.  Feidlim Cannon, from Dublin’s Brokentalkers theatre company, is the interviewer, proud of his penetrating questioning of Truscott, and his cursory references to gender, power and even political correctness, but is overawed by his bromance with the great artist.

Both characters get increasingly twitchy and eccentric, the insights rarer and the wit more and more stupid.  Truscott then strips down to her underwear; with Feidlim screaming at her to resume her clothes – and their play. 

This final meta experience almost redeems the full one-hour show, as Truscott convincingly details how women are left out of history and men – yes, like Feidlim – must step down from their privileged life in the arts and beyond, and make room for fresh and female voices.  (The voices of others aren’t mentioned). Feidlim is almost convinced – or is he?

The fantastic denouement of Masterclass climaxes a theatre hour which stays with you, even if Adrienne Tuscott under disguise wasn’t the only one looking bored in the interview. 

The play was written by the actors and Gary Keegan, also from Brokentalkers.

Martin Portus