ARTS The Irish playwright, Enda Walsh, recently pointed out that the grimly dysfunctional families in his work are actually not that farfetched . But my problem with The Walworth Farce is not implausibility: on the contrary, it is the seriousness of the subject. Black comedy is great for revealing disturbing truths but The Walworth Farce doesn’t offer enough insight into its traumatised characters and so feels sensationalist.
Walsh is certainly an original, highly talented writer. Here we are in a flat (created in fabulous, grotty detail by Sabine Dargent’s set) on London’s Walworth Road, which Irishman Dinny (Denis Conway) has turned into a fortress against the world for him and his two adult sons (Tadhg Murphy and Garrett Lombard). We watch as the three men don wigs, moustaches and frocks and act out some Byzantine drama. It becomes clear that this is a daily ritual they have enacted for two decades: a play that fictionalises their last day in Ireland. As the three scurry about, Walsh winds up the farce, balancing the comic carry-on against the darker truth that is emerging: that the play is an elaborate myth that Dinny has concocted to protect himself and his sons from the facts, but that actually imprisons them all. Then in comes a stranger (Mercy Ojelade) to unbalance the scenario.
