Theatre Review: All’s
unfair in Dublin love and war drama
O Go My Man
By Grainne McLoughlin
 At a time when Irish theatre
in Britain was at an all-time high Stella Feehily burst onto the scene
with her fantastic debut Duck.
Just two years later and she’s back at the Royal Court’s Jerwood
Theatre with her second full-length play O Go My Man. And it promises
to delight audiences through London and beyond.
“You were supposed to love me. You said it in front of 60 of our
friends and family. Even my father cried.”
These are the words of a TV journalist’s abandoned wife. Rejected
by her husband Neil after he comes back from Sudan she feels angry and
alone.
But Neil is restless. Having been haunted by the horrors of Darfur he
returns home with a head full of nightmares and takes a hammer to his
life.
Directed by Max Stafford-Clark O Go My Man is set in contemporary Dublin
in which there’s nothing but do-gooding celebrity chefs, 12 kinds
of latte and 1,000 Eastern European immigrants to pour them.
Neil gets together with new love Sarah who also leaves behind a partner
— and both the rejected choose to console themselves by exacting
merciless revenge.
The characters have enough trouble negotiating their own lives let alone
a crisis unfolding in the wider world. As in her debut Duck Feehily shows
she has a sharp eye and a keen ear for the hypocrisies of sex.
O Go My Man mixes raw emotion with surreal humour and asks is love really
all you need — or is it just a distraction from everything else?
It stars Denise Gough, Ewan Stewart, Paul Hickey, Susan Lynch and Mossie
Smith.
Feehily’s other writing includes Game — a short play for Fishamble
Theatre Company — and She Was Wearing A Blue Dress.
O Go My Man is playing at London’s Royal Court from January 12 to
February 11 before touring Cambridge Arts Theatre; Nuffield Southampton;
Birmingham Rep, Gardner Arts Centre, Cork’s Everyman Palace, Brighton;
Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells; Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford and Bolton
Octagon.
O Go My Man will play at the Royal Court from January 12 to February
11. For further information and tickets contact the box office on 020
7565 5000 or www.outofjoint.co.uk
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