Dear Arabella – three women heal through compassion despite loss and oppression (Patrick Talbot and Rathmore Productions at Lyric Theatre until Sunday 12 October)

Marie Jones’ Dear Arabella premiered in the Lyric Theatre almost seven years ago as part of the 2018 Belfast International Arts Festival. It tells the interlocking story of three separate women living lonely lives.

Jean’s working-class home is on the odd-numbered dark side of Rockhammer Street and she feels trapped caring for her anxious mother. For fifteen years Elsie’s marriage has been under the silent oppression of her husband’s unspoken wartime experiences. And the youngest of the three, Arabella, is a wartime widow who rattles around an enormous white house on the hill overlooking a beach. She may be the richest of the three women, but she is still poor in spirit, living under the shadow of prolonged grief for her young husband who was “lost at sea”.

The original production ran as a series of three monologues, emphasising the poetry of Jones’ script and the power of the actors’ delivery. Now, an opening voiceover postpones the buildup of energy that arrives when the actors finally get to speak live, with this new staging giving each character about 15 minutes to establish themselves before shuffling the dialogue between them, getting laughs from the last line of one being picked up as the first line of the other, and even bigger laughs when the mood cuts from a moment of relaxation to a someone in a complete tizzy.

Versatile Katie Tumelty comes alive as she brings Jean out of her household’s shadow and boldly escapes to the sea for a life-changing afternoon. She illustrates the medical and social woes of Jean’s fellow down-at-heel residents who are denied direct sunlight during the day. Joanne Crawford’s impeccable sense of timing and interaction with props garners some of the play’s best laughs as Elsie begins to stand up to her cold husband. Jayne Wisener shifts accents, playing posh but anguished Arabella living along the ‘scampi’ coastline, her bespectacled mother, and superbly bringing to life housekeeper Dorcas as a husky feather duster behind the piano (which Wisener later plays live ... the piano, not the duster).

Tracey Lindsay’s set places each actor up on their own raised wooden jetty, with steps down to the beach and the shiny water that covers the majority of the stage. Parts of the script are now embellished with detailed sound effects. Garth McConaghie weaves in some of his trademark reverb and echoes at key moments, while Mary Tumelty brings the flat cloudy sky backdrop to life with vivid lighting as the storms of life hit Jean, Elsie and Arabella.

Director Matthew McElhinney maximises the movement in each scene. There’s an abundance of props on each mini-stage. An umbrella is twirled. Flies are swatted. A coat stand is beautifully brought to life by Elsie/Crawford. Even when they’re in the same location and speaking at the same time, the characters are reminiscing and never allowed to have direct eyeline with each other.

The interweaving of the storylines, almost in real time, provides more opportunities for humour to break through. But some of the delicacy and intimacy of the original has been lost and the script no longer has primacy, a standalone “piece of art”.

Set in the early 1960s, Dear Arabella is post-war rather than pre-Troubles. There is still a lot of loss. A neighbour dies by suicide. A cat goes missing and the fate of a budgie is unknown for a long time. A husband is presumed to have died at sea. A steady job is made redundant. A limb is missing. A packed lunch goes awol. Jones eventually gets the audience to laugh – wholeheartedly and also guiltily – at all of these situations.

If Dear Arabella has a message, it’s that small acts of compassion can bring healing, that acknowledging a stranger’s worth can be unknowingly transformative, and that even people who are oppressed can choose to live in the moment.

Dear Arabella runs at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 12 October and is produced by Patrick Talbot Productions and Rathmore Productions.

Photo credit: Ciarán Bagnall 

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!