Denouement, Lyric Theatre, Belfast. October 23rd, 2025.
By Conor O’Neill
Yes, like many of you, I had to look the definition of the title up. I’ll not go through the Oxford English dictionary explanation with you, but I’ll paraphrase:” “all the strands of a story getting wrapped up”. A neat and tidy bow. How nice would that be?
Don’t let the name fool you, Denouement will equally pleasure you and pressure you. This play is not for the faint-hearted. It’s a powerful piece that reaches parts of your soul; your humanity and maybe raises your hope for the human condition. But it’s not without it’s flaws; I’ll get to them later.
The year is 2048, the 48 turned around gives us the feeling of Orwell’s classic dystopian novel/prediction in the guise of the leaping-off point of 1984. Writer John Morton is said to have written this play through lock-down, I also read that it was a pandemic radio play. It’s not hard to be instilled with the loneliness and feeling of pending doom from the start to the finish of this 90 minute, one act play.
The set is a ramshackle house somewhere in Ireland, it’s a mixture of turf-burning, barren rural serenity with more than a little steam-punk infused industrial feeling going on. Maree Kearns, (set and costume designer) if you planned your set to give 99% of the audience an hour and a half of claustrophobia? Job done. Very well done indeed.
The plot is that of those with hours to live. A husband, Liam (Patrick O’Kane) and wife Edel (Anna Healy) share a tiny farmhouse in the great beyond. TVs flicker, the weather outside is treacherous, there’s danger, or is it hypervigilance, everywhere? Ominous padding of minor chords on a keyboard constantly swell and fall as the plot tries to make sense.
And here’s my problem with Denouement, it has no real plot, just a series of incidents randomly tied together with spartan movements and nicely written speech exchanges. Liam keeps typing his memoirs, Edel reveals parts of their lives some wouldn’t share, Adultery; Ireland as the frozen north; three kilo of cocaine, two kilo of ketamin, enough drink to raise Oliver Reed from the grave; a shotgun primed at the back of a spouse’s head; kids in every corner of the world making contact; a future that looks hopeless? I think we’ve had quite enough of that. We’ve been through this. Writer, John Morton, even says it himself in the program: “Post pandemic, the idea didn’t seem so novel anymore”. I tend to agree. As winter creeps in, this play proceeds the months of melancholy we have to face, and it’s unsettling.
I don’t know if I’m picking things up wrong here, but while peoples’ troubles will always be relevant, other than being set in 2048, I feel this piece of mixed-up science-fiction is about two years too late to be watched with eager eyes.
I applaud the Lyric’s Jim Fay’s recent productions and inspired choices of new talent and decisions over the last few years. But for me, this play has all the hallmarks of a brilliant piece of post-pandemic work: great acting, set, design, direction and strength of situation to be a great work of theatre, but it just doesn’t hit the mark. Why? I’m not quite sure, it seems to over-stretch, grasp, there’s too many holes in the plot, the main focus gets lost in style over substance. Maybe I missed something the hundreds of fellow viewers reveled in? I’m only one voice of the hundreds who have saw it since opening night… I wish I could throw compliments in its direction, but it left me feeling depressed and unfulfilled.
Denouement runs at the Lyric up to and including November 15th. For booking details visit http://www.lyrictheatre.co.uk or simply ring the box office on 02890 381081
ENDS
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