The muted sense of optimism that change is on the way in the wake of the General Election result earlier this month will do little to salve the immediate plight of the characters at the centre of Alice Malseed’s new play who find themselves Three Pay Days away from hunger and homelessness.
Presented by Kabosh and EastSide Arts in Belfast’s Sanctuary Theatre, it is theatre as polemic and plea, exploring the vicious debilitating circle of zero-hour and low-pay contracts, of exorbitant rent rises in an environment where demand outstrips supply, and of the iniquities of a benefit system seemingly designed to punish those it supposedly supports.
Malseed’s script and Paula McFetridge’s staging echoes the politically-accented agitprop movement of the 1970s and early 1980s, which saw the likes of Belt and Braces, CAST, Red Ladder, Spare Tyre, Welfare State and many others touring work intended to provoke reaction and to agitate for change.
Those aims filter through Three Pay Days with a somewhat uneven momentum. Despite its fleet, 75-minute playing time, it’s a dense, wordy play, obligated by explicatory exposition inking in background and context.
Cutting through the prolixity are repeated punches to the solar plexus that carve out bleak portraits of characters pinioned between unforgiving market forces and an uncaring social system as the complicating consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to make themselves felt.
Denied furlough support during the successive lockdowns and struggling to recover still, Holly Hannaway’s newly single mother, Anna, is caught in a crippling vortex of menial jobs where her skills as a would-be graphic designer are taken advantage of, leaving her at the whims of uncaring estate agents and flitting between mould-ridden houses owned by exploitative landlords. Equal parts sparky and vulnerable, it’s a performance filled out by a grit, determination and dignity leavened by the dislocation of finding herself tossed uncontrollably around by unforgiving circumstance.
Patrick McBrearty’s obliging handyman Stevie, laden with the care of his elderly, ailing father, is similarly confined and constrained by the demeaning necessity of placating avaricious employers immune to his cares. McBrearty provides several of the evening’s most moving moments as he wrestles with squaring exasperated despair with well-meaning intent. It’s here that Malseed’s own intent is most adroitly expressed.
Unabashed at abusing her employer status and cosseted by her inherited Airbnb rental income is the notionally safe and secure café-owner Jennifer. Mary Moulds deftly describes the realisation of her own vicarious status as she falls under the scrutiny of the Inland Revenue. No one, it seems, is immune.
Developed in association with the local community food hub Larder>East, and applaudable for addressing the brute here-and-now with discernible heart, anguish and anger about those caught in a system unwilling to help them, Three Pay Days is, for all its problematic verbosity, a timely and righteous play for today. As such, it’s another feather in the cap of Kabosh’s long commitment to making theatre that matters.
Three Pay Days will tour to The Felons, Belfast as part of Féile an Phobail on August 2, and to The Playhouse, Derry on August 3.