Belfast Boy – baring his soul on a bare stage (Kat Woods at Lyric Theatre until 29 November)

Jamie can’t sleep and his London GP would prefer to get to the root cause rather than send his patient out with tablets. Belfast Boy is a confessional piece of theatre that listens in on Jamie’s first session with his ‘head doctor’.

Conor Cupples steps on stage as Jamie, a hesitant figure entering the office and taking the empty seat. When he’s full of stimulants, Jamie can be an extrovert, a night club diva with all the moves. But faced with a psychologist, he’s a nervous individual, at times blurting out almost unfiltered thoughts, and psyching himself up to make what he feels are some of the more major admissions about his coming of age.

His Protestant family grew up in Belfast but were forced out and moved to England. While nothing in his life jumps out to Jamie as being cause for his insomnolence, the audience quickly lose count of the traumatic events and stressful experiences that he has survived.

The set consists of a simple white chair. There are no props. Cupples’ gift of rapidly shifting into and out of different accents is aided by the effective overhead lighting to quickly move in and out of asides and memorable incidents. (His brother Vinto receiving orders from the UVF is accompanied by a neat red, white and blue wash.) Sound effects blast in when phones ring or Jamie plays a video on his phone, but Massive Attack’s Teardrop is one of the few moments when incidental music plays to enhance the mood of a scene rather than being mentioned in the dialogue.

I’ve seen two productions of another (later) Kat Woods play – Wasted (Pintsized Productions and Bruiser) – a two handed show that I described at the time as “a sweaty and sweary examination of consensual sex within the context of a one-night stand and binge drinking culture”. Belfast Boy is no less deftly written, but the pace is deliberately much slower and the overall energy remains more subdued.

Issues of consent are also present in Belfast Boy, along with an exploration of sexuality, assault, sectarian hate, domestic violence and the perils of half inching other people’s property. Cupples brings it all to life with a confident performance that never lets go of Jamie’s diffidence as he processes his life and times.

Previously performed at the Edinburgh Fringe by Declan Perring, the former ‘Belfast Boy’ has to explain concepts from his troubled life back home (like the UVF and The Falls) to a ‘mainland’ practitioner unfamiliar with Norn Iron affairs. By the end of the hour-long session, the layers of protection and memory have begun to be stripped off, and Jamie – along with the audience acting as the psychologist – realise that plenty more remains to be revealed over the next five visits.

Belfast Boy was performed in the Lyric Theatre’s Naughton Studio on 28 and 29 November.

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