236. TRANSPORT
During
the 1830s and 1840s the British government transported over 40,000 Irish women,
mostly from the lower classes, to Australia, then mainly a penal colony for
British and Irish felons. The women were intended as brides
and sex partners for the convicts, and were transported after being found guilty
of various infractions, serious, minor, and sometimes trumped up. (In the 1840s the
Great Potato Famine would exacerbate the transport system when it was deemed
necessary to reduce Ireland’s population.) The new musical at the Irish Rep,
TRANSPORT, with a book by SCHINDLER’S LIST author Thomas Keneally and music and
lyrics by Black 47 front man Larry Kirwan (recently responsible for HARD
TIMES), places us aboard a transport ship, The
Whisper, in 1838, as it makes its four-month journey from Cork to Sydney’s
Botany Bay, with its human cargo of women and their male overseers.
Four stereotypical women are
depicted, representing a microcosm of the many thousands who made the trip:
Bride Riordan (Pearl Rhein), a widow convicted of stealing butter; Kate O’Hare
(Jessica Grové), a redheaded rebel; Polly Cantwell (Emily Skeggs), falsely
accused of theft and embracing her newborn child; and Maggie Carroll (Terry
Donnelly), an odd, older woman with prophetic gifts. Their lords and masters
are the ship’s duty-bound leader, Captain Winton (Mark Coffin), ruthless yet
with hints of a softer side; Surgeon Delamare (Edward Watts), a tall, handsome,
blonde in full leading man mode; and Hennessy (Patrick Cummings), a
good-looking Irish soldier in the British army seeking a land grant in New
South Wales. There’s also a rebel priest, Father Manion (Sean Gormley), whose
politics have caused his exile. We must accept as a dramatic convention the
sense that there is no one else on the ship but this handful of characters.
Only
Captain Winton shows signs of villainy; all the others are kind to the women,
and two men have romances with them, the doctor with Bride, whom he makes his
hospital orderly, and Hennessy with Kate, although circumstances bring that
story to a tragic end. No single
character—all of them skimpily drawn—dominates the plot, which attempts to
express each woman’s personal dilemma, an approach that dissipates the book’s
dramatic thrust. With so many stories to tell, and the day to day trials of
life aboard the ship (including a big and fatal storm) to convey, the show’s
dynamic rapidly thins out as you begin to wonder just where—apart from Down
Under—the story is going.There are also multiple themes woven in, political,
social, and religious. Still, the subject matter is sufficient to sustain
interest for much of the time, and, despite the questionable contrivances (do
we really need two shipboard romances?) and “happy” ending, the 90 minutes
(with one intermission) are relatively pain-free (except, perhaps, for the
mutinous Kate, who—in another contrivance—gets severely whipped for trying to
take over the ship so she can sail it to New York).
Larry Kirwan’s score for five
musicians (piano, guitar, violin, drums, flute/whistles), combining the
elements of traditional Irish music with a contemporary sound, are moderately
successful, some more so than others, but not especially distinctive. They
serve their dramatic purpose but quickly fade from consciousness. The cast
sings them well enough, although not all the voices are of comparable quality
(I heard a few flat notes), with Pearl Rhein’s performance being the most
notable among the generally successful ensemble. With her strong personal
presence, and rich, deep-throated vocals, she makes an excellent romantic
interest for Edward Watts’s Surgeon Delamare, who assigns her the role of his
hospital orderly.
The distinguished 79-year-old
British designer Tony Walton (once married to Julie Andrews) has directed and
done sets, lights, and costumes. His staging is a bit stilted, even with lively
choreographic assistance from Barry McNabb, but I greatly appreciated his set
and lighting contributions. The Irish Rep’s stage, with a thick pillar at one
corner, is notably problematic, but Mr. Walton wraps a spiral staircase around
it and makes it the bridge, albeit without the ship’s wheel. His flexible use
of a small rampway under which the women sleep, and of a turntable (increasingly
common this season), are effective, and his lighting creates magic on the
stage’s bare walls, especially with the inclusion of a ship’s sail at the rear.
The men’s costumes are standard for such characters, but I kept wondering if
Mr. Walton’s keeping the women in white muslin shifts, shoulders and feet bare,
was appropriate for a period in which the female body was never as exposed.
TRANSPORT introduces us to a
little-known moment in 19th-century history and it does so through the
entertaining ingredients of music, song, dance, and romance. The result, for
all the subject’s inherent tragedy, however, is rather upbeat, especially when
the show closes with the full cast singing a rousing song about arriving in
“Au-stral-i-yay.” TRANSPORT, while moderately pleasing, is never quite
transporting.
