Ablutions

For the most lethal drug in the western world, alcohol has a mixed relationship with the arts. For every work awash with unquestioning beer-soaked bonhomie, there is a darker twin, drinking alone in the corner, ushering its liver and soul into the abyss.

Ablutions, the stage adaptation of Booker-nominated Patrick DeWitt's debut novel, is closer in spirit to the latter, but manages to smudge its bleak edges with a certain wooziness. It is alcoholism, then, in form as well as content.

We meet the bartender in his Holywood bar, a place of barfly ghosts and broken drinkers. His marriage is dissolving along with his internal organs. The pains of reality—rent payments, a crummy job, health worries, relationships—are dulled through pills and cans of Budweiser.

Despite this oppressive scenario, FellSwoop Theatre have flecked the play with a dreamy sense of unreality. Music is played live throughout, songs waft in and out, scenes repeat, occasionally with different outcomes, premonitions come true.

In the play's signature and most impressive scene, the bartender's spiritual keening takes him to the mighty Grand Canyon. He just wants to feel something, anything. But all he sees is a massive hole in the ground. He sees what is missing. He stares into the abyss, and it slays him.

Ablutions is both a groggy and sobering work. The performances are uniformly excellent, the use of music and spliced narrative leavens what could be doughy subject matter. Ultimately, however, it is a play to admire, rather than love. This is theatre as a stiff drink. There is nothing bubbly here.