Burnt Out – tensions explode as a new bonfire casts a shadow over domestic and community harmony – Lyric Theatre until Saturday 4 November as part of Belfast International Arts Festival #BIAF23

It’s the beginning of the summer, and hair stylist Cheryl (Kerri Quinn) and primary school teacher Michael (Terence Keeley) live in a modern and fashionable home opposite a field that has just become a bonfire site. Michael’s brother Donny (Caolán Byrne) has some influence in the loyalist community, though his girlfriend Lesley (Shannen McNeice) is the official bonfire liaison officer. A local resident is known to have complained to the police, but P.C. McGoldrick (Caroline Curran) has her own agenda when she turns up at the couple’s door. Counter complaints are now flying about, and tensions are rising faster than the stack of wooden pallets. Can the area reach the Eleventh Night without community tensions combusting?

Gary Mitchell’s Burnt Out is a play – his first since Smiley – that shows how persistent intimidation can corrode someone’s sense of wellbeing and either drive them down a helter skelter spiralling slide of antagonism, or else persuade them to pay out in a fruitless attempt at final resolution and reconciliation.

At the end of act one, I’d a sense that while this play was teasing out just how powerful the emotion of fear can be in shaping people’s actions, the actual source of community tension – in this case an unwelcome loyalist bonfire – could have been swapped out for any number of issues that could threaten to disrupt the peace in an area. It felt like the bigger message was going to be how people in so many different circumstances can wind up each other – and themselves – into terribly destructive no-win situations that so quickly reach the point of no recovery.

However, the second act waves away any ambivalence about the importance of the setting and immediately delivers a stream of sectarian bile from the mouth of Donny. A joke is cracked about the poor spelling in a piece of loyalist graffiti. Suddenly, it’s all about sectarianism and loyalist bonfire culture. And that’s before Burnt Out eventually jumps a shark or two with Donny’s rant against the dangers of feminism in an out-of-the-blue moment of pure toxic masculinity that suggests that this thug who so often resorts to violence is the character struggling the most to contain the fear pent-up inside.

Quinn and Keeley – reunited on the Lyric stage seven years after playing a fabulous Mary and Joseph in a Christmas show – are portrayed as a somewhat mismatched couple, albeit wearing matching pyjamas. They enjoy a smooch and a cuddle, but disagree on important matters like cats vs dogs, whether to try to have a baby, the importance of her salon business vs his job as a teacher, and importantly, how to deal with the real and existential threat from across the road. There’s an interesting class dynamic, with Cheryl very much grounded with her people-based business, while Michael has unquestionably escaped his working-class roots and is no longer comfortable hanging around in the same circles as his brother. The potential fault lines in this central relationship loom large even before the fissures and fractures appear at the behest of brother Donny, his maltreated partner Lesley, and the gloriously stubborn and unhelpful officer McGoldrick (played to a tee by Curran).

Coercion and threats just drip off Donny. Cheryl is more able for him than his wee brother, but that plays into Donny’s wicked sense of what’s right for him. While sextortion is fleetingly on the table with Lesley trying to lure Michael with her wily charms, she soon switches to the old-fashioned extortion of money to placate the misunderstood youths building the bonfire.

Gary Mitchell’s new play is very well planned, plotted, and constructed. Jimmy Fay translates throwaway quips on the page into on stage zingers that are rewarded with instant gasps and giggles. The audience are lulled into laughing at deeply serious and disturbing moments that in the real world would leave us shocked and appalled rather than full of mirth. Garth McConaghie’s techno soundtrack throws in musical puns with blasts of Insomnia and Bad Guy, while the bass subs dotted along the front of the stage add to the sense of unease and help announce the end of the first act. Conor Murphy’s acoustically-friendly set floats above a black stage, though the small cast rarely feel intimate in the cavernous front room. Neil O’Driscoll’s projections add a sense of what’s happening over the road as well as inside the heads of the protagonists.

Throughout the performance, there seemed to be heavy hints that Cheryl may be concealing a much more complicated role in the unravelling situation. Yet other than an animated shadows that might look like familiar but assumed lost ‘friends’ at the conclusion, the breadcrumbs of Cheryl deliberately taking back control felt like they turned out to be red herrings. Then the play ends twice. On opening night we spontaneously applauded after a dynamic scene that turned out to be penultimate one, with the action returning for one last check-in with the troubled couple. Like a lot of Bond films, it felt like one ending too many.

Burnt Out is an explosive psychological thriller that certainly adds to the library of loyalist noir, where the mere mention of a bonfire heralds certain death and destruction. Mitchell knows about being on the receiving end of intimidation. He fights with words not baseball bats or petrol bombs. His script emerges from personal experience and is likely to resonate with others who have been bullied, and with those who take on the role of gatekeepers to preserve cultural expression. But I’m not sure the young adults who build bonfires or the grassroots communities who feel that they’ve been left behind by their political representatives will hear or see themselves on stage. Other plays and other playwrights will have the opportunity to address those gaps.

Having opened Belfast International Arts Festival, Burnt Out runs at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 4 November. Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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