OK, just hear me out.
Fly Me to the Moon is not a theatrical blockbuster, it's not a perception-shattering piece of insightful literature, it's not a play from which you and your companions will need to go for a drink and debrief after watching it at Theatre North West.
Instead it is exactly what the Prince George public needs to start up the autumn engines and get back into P.G. cultural life after the summer.
Artistic director Jack Grinhaus has been choosing the plays for TNW for a couple of years now, and he has thrown some programming curve balls in that time. This one is a classic change-up pitch - a simple, elegant, uncomplicated throw right into the heart of the strike zone. It is fun and fast-paced.
It's also fast-mouthed. Have you noticed at the movie theatre, when a martial arts film lets out, half the patrons are miming karate chops and ninja kicks across the parking lot and half the way home? Well for at least an hour after this play, half the audience'll be speaking in Irish brogue and quaintly swearing with a titter and wink.
Half the conversations will start with "OK, just hear me out" or "don't say a word 'till I'm finished talkin'."
And you have to hear this play out, as well. It's all farcical and comical, full of spit and vinegar, but underneath it all is a long hard look at modern First World poverty and the things we do to just get by in daily life. Sure, the accent is Irish; sure the script talks all about getting paid in pounds and quid; the sign on the door says Belfast sure enough but it's a story about all of you and me and how people get into trouble out of simple needs for everyday amounts of money, and how holes get dug not by stupidity but by intelligence - thinking and rethinking and maybe over-thinking, but maybe it's not paranoia when the world really is out to get you, eh?
There isn't much time to analyze the themes, really. That stuff just lingers in the mind afterwards like the aftertaste of a Guinness you just chugged. I noticed, in the first couple of minutes, that the one window in the one room of the simple set sure looked like prison bars when the actors stood on the outside looking in. That room was a daily prison to ol' Davy McGee who was too old and infirm to enjoy a life within those walls.
The window formed an allegorical prison for Davy's two caretakers, Francis and Loretta, who had the small issue of Davy, dead on the bathroom floor, to contend with one day. And a not insignificant amount of Davy's money within their grasp.
What to do, what to do? And what to do about what you decided to do?
Decisions fall against each other like drunken dominos and the audience is so intimately intertwined with the dialogue - not the least part of which is rooting for some of the wild choices they make - that you feel like an accomplice at the very least and even a co-conspirator at times. And it's delicious fun.
The recipe was written by a master of English-language scriptwriting, the great playwright Marie Jones. But the chefs in this kitchen are three: director Maja Ardal, plus actors Kristina Nicoll and Deborah Williams. It's a mighty task for only three to push such a play into motion. What a meal this production turns out to be. It's a banquet of comedy and tragedy all blended together.
Williams and Nicoll are so completely convincing that from the second sentence uttered, you cease to be concerned that you're watching a play. The greatest value in theatre is getting the audience to suspend their disbelief, to forgive the obvious lies used to transport us to another time and place. I'm not from Belfast, and I've never had a pile of money sitting there tempting me, but I was always a silent partner in this conspiracy.
Even if you know you'd never take the tempting money, or grab it and run without a moment's hesitation, it is a gift to bear witness to the acting skills of these two powerful performers. I have no doubt they could swap roles from night to night and be equally effective. Nicoll and Williams are humour sensations, their comedic timing informed by the shafts of pain from which the jokes of life are mined.
They take turns volleying the script's insights into the struggles of life and the hilarity that comes from tickling the soft skin of hardship. They are a tandem, as characters and as actors, and we form that partnership because we, too, are Francis and Loretta and we fear to the bone that we are Davy, too, racing towards a lonely finish line.
Who we are not are Nicoll and Williams. Their skills are special, their talents expertly honed, beyond normal capabilities.
Few could pull off such performances.
What a privilege they were to see. And they do it again almost every night at Theatre North West until Oct. 5.
