Evening Train review: This dark barroom musical is staged as if it's already closing time

Life is a series of wagers in Mick Flannery's new musical, as its characters seek escape from a small town. 

The Everyman, Cork Midsummer Festival

★ ★

Life is a series of wagers in Mick Flannery’s new musical. Set in a small town in the Southwest of Ireland, it opens on a secret meeting between lovers. Grace (Kate Stanley Brennan) is the daughter of the local publican, and Luther (Ian Lloyd Anderson) is the man who owes him a lot of money. “To have so much to lose is the only feeling,” they sing, agonising at the thought of risking life without one another. 

Released as a concept album 14 years ago, Evening Train now receives a tautly written book by Ursula Rani Sarma (finally returned to these shores) that allows a wider canvass for these characters’ fears of losing. 

Grace has staked her future on escaping beyond these shores and her controlling father (Brian Doherty). The only other soul as desperate to flee is Luther’s brother Frank (Ger Kelly), a bartender covering his family’s debts and providing for a mother struggling with dementia (Deirdre Donnelly). But leaving isn’t easy. In another one of the musical’s wagers, Grace bets Frank he’ll still be behind the bar one year from now.  

As for Luther, his game is poker. Even when we see him win the pot, he’s soon tempted back to the table. Against the spiky guitars of Flannery’s menacing music, his winnings are certain to turn to debts. 

By showing Luther unravel through a gambling addiction, and punishing those around him, it's clear that this musical prefers darker shades. Kelly and Lloyd Anderson seem to approach such material with underplayed realism rather than the broader gestures of a musical, leaving their performances oddly one-note. Only Stanley Brennan’s Grace, stealing beer-bottles and ribbing other customers, seems to cut loose. 

Director Annabelle Comyn’s production for The Everyman and Rosa Productions, in association with the Cork Midsummer Festival, also seems committed to realism. The stage resembles a bar, with the band nearby for another lock-in. That provides a nice closeness, especially during one stirring duet when the piano and cello join Frank and Grace in wailing out their heartbreak.

But asking Aedín Cosgrove to design this den of inequity is a bit like asking Le Corbusier to design Fibber Magees. Her set is vast and bright, as opposed to underground and dim. At one point Luther pleas for Grace to understand the stress he’s under, as pale cotton-white light beams down on them. Is it closing time already?

That leaves an unsatisfying discrepancy, then, between a musical playing a better hand than the production it receives.