THE Walworth Farce looks creepy.
A father makes his two sons put on moustaches, wigs and ill fitting suits and do a farce. Since they were kids they have done this every day all the while cooped up in a rundown council flat in London.
“That to me is a strange sort of torture,” says Irishman and Walworth playwright Enda Walsh, in a previous interview. “My intention was to make a part that was impossible for an actor... and bring them to a point of despair.”
Actor Ray Scannell plays one of the brothers, Blake.
“It’s hard-hitting. People said to me [after seeing it] are you alright, we saw you were crying,” says Scannell.
“It would have been impossible for me [to perform] but I worked with people who had done it before.”
Scannell saw the show in Cork, in 2006, and later auditioned for the part in London.
The Walworth Farce has been described as a dramatisation of what psychiatrists call “repetition compulsion” – where people endlessly re-enact the worst thing that’s happened to them. The day the audience watch the farce, the family’s routine is interrupted with disastrous consequences.
Scannell says there has been criticism about the level of violence in the play, and there are moments where people are afraid to laugh.
“Everyone has a certain routine that gives them a sense of something,” says Scannell. “You might have certain habits at your desk, or a specific way you have your coffee, or a place you always have lunch. “When the [Walworth Farce] routine is interrupted I start acting out in very dangerous ways.”
The only time Scannell laughs during the interview is when asked if he would ever kill someone if his real life routine were interrupted (after all, the programme reveals that five people die in The Walworth Farce). In short, “No”.
Ultimately, “a lot of the play is about how families present themselves compared with what actually goes on” and how we define ourselves by the stories we tell about ourselves.
The Walworth Farce, Opera House, 7.30pm, March 17-19, 21; 2pm & 7.30pm, March 20.