A domestic drama that winds itself up into unbearable, unspeakable tension, Cailíní at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre illustrates Tolstoy’s astute observation that “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” in no uncertain terms.
Family reunions—especially those convened because a parent’s health is failing—seldom end happily for anyone involved. Certainly on stage. First seen at Dublin’s Samuel Beckett Theatre Dublin in 2023, Cailíní corrals five sisters of various ages and even more various temperaments into the family home on the pretence that their alcoholic father is nearing his end.
Except, in Íde Simpson and Beth Strahan’s adroitly structured play, initially developed as a university degree graduating piece and produced here by their Ablaze Productions company, there’s a secret lurking in the empty bed upstairs that ultimately tears the sibling sisters apart. It’s not the only secret waiting to be revealed in a taut, tense piece that suggests the writing partnership is one to watch.
Strahan’s deceptively low-key direction initially glides along on strained displays of reunited conviviality before steadily edging to and breaking the surface the loitering tensions beneath left unaddressed during the sisters’ separation.
Despite its 80-minute brevity, Cailíní is a dense portrait of unsalved childhood hurts and sibling rivalries—exacerbated by the early death of their mother—that haunt still-forming adult relationships. As things simmer to scalding boiling point, Strahan makes much of pregnant pauses and loud silences that call to mind Eugene O’Neill’s adroit marshalling of molten emotional forces just below the surface of otherwise mundane family life. It’s a daring conceit but one executed with disciplined sureness.
A young, six-strong cast play with persuasive communal conviction and admirable maturity, the five sisters—Simpson, Lily-Kate Hearns, Megan Doherty, Éabha Ó Céidigh Hayes and Juliet Hill—joined by Seán McDermott’s boyfriend, nursing a secret of his own. Ironically revealed to all by that most contemporary of interlocutors—a ‘smart speaker’—it’s a veritable hand-grenade casually lobbed into proceedings.
Emmett Brady Dunne’s set is appreciatively sophisticated for a young company touring its first production, the family kitchen—that crucible of domestic dramas—abutted by an exterior, plant-adorned yard.
Making much of dramatic side-lit effects, Conor Bustos’s lighting articulately inks in the incremental transformation of the domestic hearth into a claustrophobic, Sartre-like hell.
It’s a pedantic but necessary complaint to note that production images provided are pre-show publicity shots that only glancingly allude to what is seen on stage.