Theatre in Review: Crackskull Row (The Cell/Workshop Theatre)

	John Charles McLaughlin, Terry Donnelly. Photo Michael Bonasio

One look at Daniel Geggatt's set for Crackskull Row and you know that you are in for an evening of unrelieved squalor. The script for Honor Molloy's drama calls for "a shitheap" somewhere in Dublin, and the designer has honored that request, in spades. The plaster is coming off the walls, dirt stains are omnipresent, and a single bare bulb dangles over the filthy sink; elsewhere, a couple of traffic warning lights are illuminated, seemingly signaling danger ahead. Audiences, take note.

Such a space would seem to be uninhabitable, but there's Masher, described by Molloy as "a wreck of a woman," occupying the dilapidated couch at stage center. And then there's Wee Dolly, who claims to be Masher's daughter and who enters via the fireplace, instantly complaining about the general filth. Of course, as Masher points out, there's no longer any running water and the chamber pot -- happily concealed out of our sight, behind the couch -- needs emptying, so what's a lady to do? Wee Dolly, giving her mother a good scrub, urges Masher to move to Maspeth, Queens, adding, "I've worked too hard and too long to revert to the bastarding, murdering level that is this fambilly [sic]."

Keep your eye on Wee Dolly, whose strange entrance signals that she is one the squirrelliest aspects of a very squirrelly play; however, she is thoroughly accurate in her assessment of Masher and company who, in a flashback, are revealed to constitute a textbook's worth of dysfunctions. Gina Costigan, who until now has played the role of Wee Dolly, enters as the younger version of Masher, also known as Dolly. Dolly is married to a man known as Basher, and they have a son named Rasher. Colin Lane appears as both Basher and the middle-aged version of Basher, who, in his adolescent incarnation, is played by John Charles McLaughlin. One of the challenges of watching Crackskull Row is sorting out who anyone is at any given moment.

The first part of Crackskull Row takes place in 1999; when the action flashes back to 1966, things are looking especially grim. Basher is drunk and improvident, a fiddler who can't hold on to his instrument. (More than once, his fiddle case is opened to disclose the absence of an instrument, needlessly and repetitively making the point that Basher, for all his violent tendencies, is an empty vessel of a man.) To keep the family afloat, Dolly dolls herself up and heads down the street to turn a few tricks. This naturally upsets the young Rasher -- "rank sin" he calls it, "doing the dirt with whatever and whoever's going up and down the laneways" -- but not for the reason you might think. Alarm bells go off when Dolly regales her son with accounts of his father's sexual aggression: "Last night. He tried to get up on me. Pushing in with his membrum regnum. That's his name for it. Mem-bar-rumm." But even this doesn't prepare us for mother and son kissing on lips, the boy trying to run his hand up her skirt. "Man-of-hunger, you'll be my ruin with those gentle hands," she says, gaily.

Clearly, this oedipal household is ready to blow its stack, and when the explosion comes, it's a real lulu: In the course of five minutes or so we get a couple of beatings, the revelation of incest, a bloody miscarriage, and murder. The latter act is committed using the sword that Basher has brought home from the rubble of Nelson's Pillar -- the statue of Horatio Nelson that was in fact blown up in March 1966. But since everything in Crackskull Row must function as a symbol, Basher waves it around, calling it "the sword. Sword of all. The Membrum Regnum."

What with all this heavy, clanking symbolism and the sordid revelations coming so thick and fast, Crackskull Row teeters on the edge of self-parody throughout its brief 75-minute running time. Molloy has little interest in providing the characters with the psychological underpinnings that might justify their actions -- if, indeed, anything could; instead, she prefers to pile on the shockers. Kira Simring's direction can't supply what the play so sorely lacks; as a result, her blunt, straightforward staging is often borderline risible, especially during the overheated climax. All four actors, including Terry Donnelly as Masher, are left stranded, although I'd like to see them all again, especially McLaughlin, who manages to find something vulnerable and appealing in the royally screwed-up young Rasher.

In addition to Geggatt's set, Gertjan Houben's lighting and M. Florian Staab's music and sound design make effective contributions. Siena Zoë Allen's costumes could do more to help us sort out when Costigan is playing Dolly and when she is Wee Dolly; otherwise, her work is solid, too.

But all is not well on Crackskull Row; Molloy reaches for Greek tragedy and ends up with something closer to an episode of Maury Povich. It's not just the house that the characters inhabit that's a mess. -- David Barbour