Award winning Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell’s latest comedy thriller premièred last night at the Naughton Theatre at The Lyric to a full house. Demented takes us along for a ride with a bunch of misfits – a guy in a wheelchair, a woman, an old man and his son – as they plot and execute a bank robbery. On the flip side it also takes us on a journey with the victims of the crime – the bank manager and his family who are held hostage while the job goes down.
From the start the play oozes darkly black comedy and the laughs come thick and fast, at one point I thought some ladies in the front row were having a panic attack they were laughing so much. Although set in Northern Ireland the humour is entirely universal, as is the story, only select references and the odd joke “have you never heard of No Surrender?” bring it back to being a home spun production.
Two of the things the play does best is establish characters and tell a story. The characters are established in such away as we know their whole back story, and become vested in them, without being preached to. Conversation feels relaxed and natural and information on each character’s back story is never shoe-horned in, but rather sprinkled evenly through-out. By the time it’s finished you’re wishing a happy ending for Andrew, Stacy, Felicity, Keith, Justin and Joshua. The story flows throughout with more twists and turns than the Mississippi river, whilst never feeling contrived or conceited.
The play also deals with, as the name suggests, Dementia. Roy Heayberd plays James, the old man of the story, in a show stealing performance. Here we can see the effects of dementia from both sides of the coin, as we also get a family member’s perspective through his son Andrew, whom he lives with. Whilst dealing with some of the realities of this illness it doesn’t ever linger too long, or over dramatise these aspects and as with everything else in this comedy there’s always a punch line so the audience doesn’t get too melancholy. All in all this is a hugely funny play, filled with sympathetic characters that is well worth your time.
DEMENTED runs until the 24th May 2014 at the Lyric Theatre, details and tickets can be found here.
One Reply to “Theatre Review: Demented – Lyric Theatre”