Solar Bones review: Experimental novel adapted into absurdly random ghost story

 

Mike McCormack's novel sees the ghost of a man return to his home on All Soul's Day. Photo: Ste Murray  

Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny Arts Festival

★ 

Things don’t seem quite right in Solar Bones, Kilkenny Arts Festival’s new play in partnership with Rough Magic. I’m not talking about the strange, otherworldly kitchen covered in plastic wrap where our protagonist Marcus (Stanley Townsend), a middle-aged engineer, is confusedly looking for misplaced appliances while trying to recall foggy memories about his family. Rather, the source material - Mike McCormack’s experimental novel written in a single sentence - has had its signals mixed.

Read the description of the novel Solar Bones on its publisher’s website and the truth about Marcus is revealed straight away. He is no longer alive but in fact a ghost, stepping back into the world on All Soul’s Day. This explanation isn't lost on absolutely anyone, with the exception of Marcus himself. He spends a chunk of Michael West’s adaptation - the blurb for which omits any mention of him being an apparition - wondering what date it is and why things around his house have been moved, unaware that he has died. 

West’s script seems to suspend that realisation not just for Marcus but for the audience as well. The subtle displacement of everyday household items, the sense of lost time when he reads the date on the newspaper, all build a mystery to be solved. Such subtle details may suit a production wedded to underplayed realism but the home in director Lynne Parker’s production is spectral, its translucent plastic surfaces rippling with blue light. It’s disconnecting to see Marcus ponder the slight rearrangement of his house when its construction looks unfinished at the timber frame stage.

We watch as Marcus’s lucid memories begin to fold in on top of each other. He recalls his father’s skill in fixing machinery, lessons in how design and engineering can prevent chaos and collapse. He revisits his daughter’s art exhibition where he is shocked by her chosen medium (her own blood). During the 2007 Crytosporidium outbreak, he becomes a carer for his wife. A couple who easily bicker - blaming each other for not making a restaurant booking, that kind of thing - rediscover a tenderness between them, in gentle comforts such as falling asleep on the couch. 

The intervention of West’s script is to isolate these threads from the experimental prose, disentangle them from the wildly modernist inheritances of Joyce and Beckett, but what never existed are the prompts for these memories and how they link together. McCormack’s prose is woven from free associations, or even anecdotes that pop up out of the blue. Sitting at the kitchen table, Townsend’s Marcus may complete one story, start thinking seriously in a new direction, and jump into the details of a new unrelated episode. The composition is absurdly random.

In this disarray, Townsend is actually a marvel. His meticulous performance chooses intonations that aren’t obvious, going in directions you wouldn't expect. He delivers Marcus’s confusion with an enjoyable wryness as he digs into his life. Uncovered joys are given their required uplifts, and sorrows their sad wreckage, especially as the plot heads towards the story of Marcus’s own tragic end.

Gather together the cloudy recollections and there is something impressive here. You may find the epic tapestry of Marcus as a son, a father and a husband. A man seen in all his roles. But theatre, like engineering, sometimes gains more than it loses from order and how elements form to make a whole. Otherwise chaos reigns. 

Run ended.