DENOUEMENT at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on the 23rd of October 2025

 

DENOUEMENT at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on the 23rd of October 2025

Patrick O'Kane as Liam and Anna Healy as Edel

This new play Denouement at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, was a pleasant surprise as the content diverged from the expected literary content, as expressed by the play’s title.  Ultimately, the play was not overly literary, but a better title would enhance things.

Extraordinary elements are explained by the surround sound of a world war which is sometimes far and sometimes harrowingly close.  Television sets scattered around the set send warnings but also entertain with banal musicals.  Old technology like a typewriter is contrasted with jarringly new elements like mobile phones and the internet.



Minor catastrophes intrude on Liam and Edel’s existence such as a crashed van and distant explosions.  Friends phone the couple to be admonished.  A constant metallic buzz surrounds the action, murmuring irritatingly, becoming a crescendo. 

In the background a twilit scene, snow covers the ground.  The room is filled with clutter, mostly pruck among some useful items.  Technology seems archaic, lo fi.



The catastrophe is noisy, explosions rock the house, unlike the pandemic which the play refers to, which was invisible yet deadly.  The play was written in the shadow of the pandemic, an attempt to rationalise the irrational.  Valid questions about existence, normally suppressed, begin to emerge.

Bad dreams impinge on the characters, setting the limits for possible action.  The surround sound continues.  Songs and fragments of songs, like memories, play and re-play on the radio, distant, plaintive voices sound an S.O.S.  The distinction between transmission and reception is shortened.  Emergency messages obliterate the TV feed.



Why does Liam use a typewriter not a word processor?  Is it an anachronism or something the playwright uses?  Zoom calls and laptops are also present, past technology is simultaneously present.  The eery metallic music continues.  A family call contrasts domestic banality with impending doom.  Reminiscence and nostalgia for better times, the golden glow of a nuclear sunset.

The Zoom call crashes.  Mental breakdown continues.  Times have changed and normality is called into question.  Edel clutches her imaginary child.  The test card appears as do interrupted neon glitches and stations that monitor nothing.  Suddenly we are told that London is gone, presumably wiped off the map by some mega-bomb or mega-nothingness. 



Edel confesses that she considered leaving Liam, outlining her affair in a taut monologue.  The TV sets begin to blank; the signal re-appears.  The emergency warning disappears, it is no longer necessary.



Paul Murphy, Lyric Theatre, Belfast October 2025

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