The cringe-worthy pronunciations of Irish place names took away from a fine piece of theatre.

Here’s a great piece of theatre about contemporary Dublin, with a brilliant script, fine performances and a finish to put the heart crossways in you.

But there is a particular problem with this production for Irish audiences, which gets in the way of the action on stage and is symptomatic of what happens too often with work that is brought from Ireland to this country and adapted by Australian performers. To be blunt, the accents are crap.

The trouble is that a play depends on words – they are the medium of the theatre, colouring every perception, suggesting every mood.

And if the accents are wrong, then every spoken word strikes at the production’s credibility, weakening it at the core.

Let me give a practical example: Shining City features a couple of well-known Dublin places – Howth, probably the most popular beauty spot on the city’s north side, and Killiney, a favourite in the south.

And as any Irish person knows, Howth is prounounced to rhyme with both, not mouth, and Killiney with tiny, not teeny. Irish people in the audience were sniggering as they heard the place-names mangled – it would be the Australian equivalent of pronouncing Bondi as Bondy.

Please don’t let this put you off seeing Shining City – it is a truly powerful work by Conor McPherson, a Dublin playwright with extraordinary insight into the hidden lives behind our brash exteriors.

McPherson has an uncanny way of evoking inner struggles through the broken speech of his characters – the constant “you know?” a plea for understanding.

This is a modern ghost story. John, a salesman haunted by the spirit of his wife who was killed in a car crash, seeks help from Ian, a psychologist newly in practice after giving up the priesthood to have an affair with a young Dublin woman and fathering a child with her (are you there, Bishop Casey?).

The tortured John (wonderfully played by Laurence Coy) preoccupies us early on, but we soon discover that Ian (Alan Dukes) has his own personal problems.

First he breaks it off with Neasa (Caroline Craig of Underbelly, who is so hurt and bewildered you want to reach out and hug her), and then he picks up Laurence (Ben Guerens of Neighbours), a rent boy, who’s more than willing to trade sex for €30.

How these characters work things out for themselves and between each other is a fable of our times, as we all try to find meaning and understanding in our lives. Some break in the struggle and some triumph.

This is strong and challenging stuff but well worth the price of admission, not least for the killer ending.

by Seamus Phelan

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