Reviews

Silent (Soho Theatre)

Acclaimed Irish theatre company Fishamble present this Fringe First winning play by Pat Kinevane

Pat Kinevane in Silent

Every now and then, there’s a tinkle: the sound of small change hitting Tino McGoldrig's begging bowl. On the streets of 1980s Dublin, that sound likely cuts through the silence. In the Soho Upstairs, however, it stops McGoldrig mid-sentence, because in here, Tino gets to talk in a way that he doesn’t out there. Nobody would listen.

Pat Kinevane‘s play – it’s so much more than a monologue – is a masterclass in giving the disenfranchised a voice. His previous piece Forgotten put the elderly in the limelight. Here he looks at mental illness. However, unlike Rebecca Lenkiewicz‘s new one at the Bush, which reduces people to their problems (abused wife, dispossessed pensioner, father for justice), Silent presents us with a proper character – in both senses of the phrase.

Tino’s homeless and, as he puts it, "way beyond the cuckoo’s nest," but he’s much, much more than that. He’s wry and insouciant, caring and warm; a son who worships his mother; a man who misses his brother; and, above all else, a storyteller, Irish to the core. Sometimes, blokes on a night out use him as a latrine. He lies there and pretends not to wake up. What else can he do?

What really makes Silent, though, is how well Kinevane threads this character into reality. Tino’s not simply A.N. Other fictional being. He’s here in the room with us, bald and brilliant, with smoky eyes and a shabby tailcoat. Abandoning the script, he launches into gregarious patter with his front row – far more than ‘What’s your name and where d’you come from? – and becomes all the more real for it. Tino’s one hell of a talker.

He’s a creature of the theatre too, be it swigging from his sequinned bottle or enacting stories from his past – the various suicide attempts of his queer brother Pearce – in the style of so many silent movies. He pulls one shoulder of his vest down and transforms into his sozzled, over-sexed mother. Elsewhere, he springs into stand-up routines – one cackling over the faces men pull in pornography, another spoofing a prim, proper advert for mental health services. There’s a real relish of language – Tino talks of "jigsaw corpses" and "smiles that would shame Jesus" – but it does tend towards rambling, which might be fitting, but it’s also baggy.

Beneath all the warmth, though, there’s anger too – real, searing anger that vulnerable men, as manifold as any of us, can be so ignored by society. If any image remains burned on your retina, it’s Tino screaming himself hoarse: "How dare you? HOW DARE YOU?" He’s not so silent any more.

Silent runs at the Soho Theatre until 25th July. For more information and to book tickets, click here.