Have I No Mouth

Prepare to be sucker punched. This new work by Irish company Brokentalkers begins as a charming dialogue between real-life mother and son Ann and Feidlim Cannon, as they list the objects that matter most to them in the presence of their psychotherapist. Ann—who’s a reiki master, not a performer—feels appropriately stilted, and Feidlim’s reflections on the death of a father and an infant brother are gently moving. 

When the performance slips into a re-enactment of Feidlim’s recurring nightmare, in which his father returns as a mute, lurching stranger, what began as merely intriguing becomes extremely powerful. This bandaged avatar, this scarecrow of a departed loved one, becomes a vessel and a punching bag for unresolved regrets and resentments.

At times the effect is chilling, at others there’s a palpable sense of release that grows from the astonishing honesty of the performances. There are moments of quiet beauty, such as the linking of Ann and Feidlim’s history through showers of polystyrene snow, and others of almost unbearable intensity. Feidlim initially castigates his mother for selecting "gloomy" objects to represent her lost husband and child, but as the significance of these are gradually unpicked, the depth of her suffering is tenderly, harrowingly revealed. 

An entirely personal story, somehow it becomes more universal as the specificities of death and grieving are developed. If it’s a healing process, as Ann and Feidlim insist it is, then it’s a painful one, but the theatrical scar tissue it leaves is remarkable.