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Reviews
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Whistling PsycheBy Sebastian Barry This small-scale two-hander is a real oddity in almost every sense. It is set in an ornate station waiting room that, it transpires, is some limbo "on the edge of perdition" but whether a prelude to Heaven or Hell is uncertain. The two protagonists may be ships (or trains) that pass in the night but they are also outsiders with a shared destiny. James Miranda Barry has recently been the subject of a novel (soon to become, it is rumoured, a Channel 4 Film) by Patricia Duncker. This dangerously cultured, Cork-born, shrimp of a man was constantly followed by his devoted manservant and poodle; the latter is the physical Psyche of the title. However, the play concentrates far more on Barry's psyche in the more common sense. Never knowing his father, he followed his indigent mother until her commitment to an asylum. Then, at 13, he was taken up by a South American soldier, Captain Miranda and recreated as a putative army doctor. Against all odds, he became a medical hero in the early Eighteenth Century on the battlefields and with his work amongst lepers and the mad.
Throughout a long and arduous army career, nobody realised that the sexless James Miranda Barry was more than just a little effeminate. She was a woman. While the play concentrates on Barry, it compares him to another great medical character of the same century, Florence Nightingale. She too placed herself outside polite society, as she tried desperately to keep soldiers alive in the aftermath of the Crimean War. The statistic that the beds containing the wounded stretched for four miles tells its own tale that is made infinitely worse by graphic descriptions of constantly overflowing latrines that inevitably attract rats. Until a symbolically relieving meeting at the close that allows the hero a perpetual rest, the two can only silently support each other in their woes, whilst allowing parallels to be drawn.
Sebastian Barry writes historical pastiche with a poetic flourish. His combination of doctor and nurse illuminate each other and in true Irish tradition, he knows how to tell a story (or two). The two hours pass in a flash despite the fact that there is little action. Under Robert Delamere's direction, Claire Bloom as the Lady with the Lamp is impressive but in a supporting role. She is outshone by Kathryn Hunter, looking every bit a major classical actress, who repeats her astounding cross-dressing success as Richard III at The Globe last year. Her portrayal of a 70-year-old man is utterly convincing and the shock is more that he is in fact a woman than that an actress is playing the part. In Whistling Psyche, Sebastian Barry succeeds in sympathetically recreating the life of a fascinating woman in a most unusual but illuminating way. This thoughtful play may lack razzmatazz but it deserves to be a success. This review originally appeared on Theatreworld in a slightly different version
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