ER at the Fringe: First Love

After touring the world with their unusual Beckett repertoire, Irish troupe Gare St. Lazare Players hits the Fringe with their unabridged dramatization of an early short story about a misanthrope’s affair with a prostitute. In the customary vein of the playwright’s output, First Love approaches bleak themes of inadequacy and futility through the lyrically detached perspective of an existential pariah.

The production’s underlying virtue is its utter trust in the text. Seldom is spectacle cut short so completely. After a few minutes of waiting by an unsuspecting audience, leading man Conor Lovett casually stands up from his seat among the public, walks to the stage and starts his monologue. No bells, no light changes, no costumes and no props. Throughout the show. This is what Dogme 95 aesthetics would look like onstage.

Fortunately, Lovett’s rendition is carefully mindful of the text’s rich eccentricity. As the protagonist tells the story of his estrangement from his family and subsequent shacking up with a hooker, his character speaks much louder than the events he recollects. Just like the story colours its plot with his oddball musings and bizarre unengaged outlook on his surroundings, Lovett clothes the loner’s voice in and awkward, near-autistic drawl, merging form and content into a homogeneous portrayal of a man long unaccustomed to speaking, listening or negotiating meaning with the outside world in any way.

An animalistic objectivity informs the protagonist’s overall demeanour. Once clothed and fed, he demonstrates no other concerns, idling about in solitary contemplation of the trees, the stars and the cemetery where his father’s remains lie. His first contact with the prostitute happens when she invades the area surrounding a park bench that he had taken for his territory. Their intimacy grows, but not much: after they move together, he empties a living room of all furniture save for a sofa, and spends most of his days and nights there.

The piece doesn’t provide much in the way of a dramatic counterpoint: the prostitute-wife gets no voice of her own, and the brief glimpses of her actions offered by her husband’s account disclose no motivations whatsoever. The protagonist’s weird idiosyncrasies, however, are amusing enough to draw even laughter out of the audience and, beyond that unexpected comicality, present a compelling portrayal of an isolation both impregnable and fragile.

First Love. Directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett. Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh. 4-10, 12-17, 19-25 August, 17:30. £12 (£11 concessions). www.garestlazareplayersireland.com