Thursdays With Elvis – tackling misandry and religious hypocrisy with some tunes from the era of the King (GBL Productions at Grand Opera House until Saturday 12 April)

Lana is a working-class single mum in Belfast with a teenage daughter (the never seen and only occasionally heard Miss Maddie). Universal Credit doesn’t really cover all her bills. Her mum is an alcoholic and her dad walked out years ago and fled to Scotland. Her best friend is church-going but not terribly good living. The significant men in her life have all been found wanting. She clings onto her Dad’s love of Elvis as a comfort blanket when all around her looks bleak and uncertain. Can she care for, stand by, and provide for any or all of her loved ones?

Martin Lynch’s new play Thursdays With Elvis watches Lana as she gets ready for a series of regular Thursday nights out with her posh-sounding friend Miriam. Is there light at the end of the dark tunnel which feels like it is slowly consuming her spirit and energy? Oh, and is that really The King who keeps popping up in her kitchen?

The play’s ethos is that men are bastards, parents are flaky, religious people are lying hypocrites, and working-class mums long to drink Prosecco, dress up in primary colours, and want to sing their hearts out one night a week. Some or all of those can be true, and any or all of these are valid topics to explore in a play.

The mainstay of the play is a series of long monologues, directed by Charlotte Westenra and delivered by an intense and engaging Orla Gormley in Ciarán Bagnall’s impressive two-storey set with its resourceful pastel-coloured window blocks. The missing roof gives Lana’s home a feel of a castle, and his ingenious design allows Miriam (Caroline Curran) to pop up from ever more unexpected shadows to great comic effect with memories, one-liners and added context around Lana’s story. A spot of kicking the wall has the audience in stitches during one moment of acted out passion.

Lynch has written plenty of great material – probably too much given the elongated first half – that lands well with the Grand Opera House audiences. The playwright moves into unanticipated territory for Lynch with skits about periods, vibrators, outdoor quickies, and whether Miriam finds satisfaction during her bedroom encounters. While a three-handed play will have minimal opportunity for conversation, it’s never quite clear why Lana is talking at such length to the audience. It’s a common dramatic device, but usually there’s some event that gives the audience a purpose for listening, or the character a reason to enter confessional mode. Gormley’s strong performance distracts us from dwelling too long on the missing reason, but the uncertainly lingers.

The second act is more assured than the first which sometimes resorts to dialogue like “this song also reminded me of him” to shoehorn in the next musical number. Lana loses her accent when singing – who doesn’t?! – but is well up for mellow numbers and belting out hits standing in heels on top of the kitchen table.

There are a number of not unsurpassable stumbling blocks that threaten to hold Thursdays With Elvis back. The title implies that there will be a lot of Elvis references, but the set list includes as many tracks by Aretha Franklin, the Ronettes, Etta James and Tina Turner as Presley numbers. Norman Bowman has the gyrating pelvis and the threads to look like Elvis – costume designer extraordinaire Diana Ennis has kitted him out with amazing outfits – but by the end of the songs he sounds more like the Memphis legend than the less punchy beginnings. More generally, quite a few songs begin in unfriendly keys that hold back the fine-voiced Gormley and Bowman.

A succession of quick changes between Ennis’ dazzling costumes becomes a fun part of the show. Though Lana’s Temu app must have remarkably good clothes for ridiculously bargain prices given her stretched household budget.

Lana is sweary from the start, though much of it feels like it’s just been added for effect to underscore her working-class roots and garner laughs, with later scenes managing to stand on their own feet with much more occasional cursing (and feel more effective for it). The programme notes indicate that writing about single mums is very personal to Lynch. Lampooning religion feels like another bugbear. A second gag about the closeness of Mary Magdalene and Jesus feels gratuitously offensive when the first milder version had already made the point a few minutes before and got a laugh. Earlier in the play, the Hare Krishna mantra is mocked for a cheap giggle possibly better suited to a playground. More positively, Miriam’s recollection of calling truth to power in a meeting with her church elders builds into a very solid scene.

For me, despite great performances, a funny script, a brilliant set, and fabulous costumes, the ambition of delivering more than the sum of its parts was never achieved. Expect to see a sharper, shorter restaging in the near future: the potential is there. Thursdays With Elvis continues its run at the Grand Opera House on Saturday 12 April.

Photo credit: Ciarán Bagnall

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