A PASSION PLAY (Written on the Waves/Forty-Five North)****

  

By Cal

Link: https://soundcloud.com/user-538797665/a-passion-play 

Available until: Unknown

A Passion Play is the story of two girls in Cork in 2015. The title refers to the fact they’re putting on a passion play at their local church, but perhaps one of the girls is starting to feel a passion for the other. Or perhaps they both are.

Bridie and Sam are very different. Bridie is Irish. Her religion is very important to her. She hates hockey. Sam is English and recently moved to Cork. She enjoys playing hockey and although her parents force her to attend church, she doesn’t really understand religion. Yet the two girls experience a connection and a friendship begins to build. Opposites can attract in a friendship too. But is it just a friendship?

Margaret Perry’s play follows the two girls as they get to know each other and try to understand each other and work together on the passion play. The characters are clearly differentiated. Bridie is well-behaved and her religion is very important to her, but she mostly accepts Sam as she is and doesn’t try to convert her. Sam is quite casual, direct and to the point and she’s definitely different from Bridie, but she’s not vulgar or coarse. They’re not caricatures or ridiculously opposite. They’re human beings with a lot of differences, but with a realistic amount of common ground for two people who become friends.

Director Jessica Lazar places the emphasis firmly on the two friends with only a small amount of background noise, perhaps only what Bridie and Sam are likely to notice themselves. There are also some pauses where the audio is silent, but you can still really feel what’s happening because of the way the drama has been built up.

Nicola Coughlan is sweet and earnest but intelligent and honest as Bridie. She has her ideals, but Nicola gives her a realism and an unexpectedly firm manner at times which really works. It helps the characters to meet on an equal footing. Hannah Bristow brings humour to Sam’s more direct moments, but doesn’t allow Sam to be no more than a comedy character. It’s a great example of a character who can be funny without always being aware of that.

It’s a subject that might not appeal to everyone at first glance, but this isn’t fundamentally a religious story. It’s a story about two human beings and their growing understanding of each other and themselves – and I think we can all relate to that.