Theatre review: JUMP!?

Pauline O’Driscoll plays the role of a woman tethering on the brink with verve and pathos. JUMP!? is on now at the CAT CLUB until January 3.

JUMP!?, written and performed by Bandon native Pauline O’ Driscoll, is a new comedic play about a middle-aged woman called Monica, who finds herself stuck in a marriage she no longer feels seen or heard in, while also struggling with occasional bouts of depression and the “hor-mental” onset of menopause.

Currently enjoying a second run at the Cork Arts Theatre, the play begins with O’ Driscoll, decked out from head to toe in a jumpsuit, helmet and goggles, about to dive out of a plane, or so it would seem. 

However, before finding out whether or not she takes this drastic plunge, the audience are given a run down of a selection of various escapades from her colorful life, which eventually brought her to this dramatic point of no return.

Internally, Monica is, as Elizabeth Smart once said in her novel ‘By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept’, “not in exile from the land of youth.” She is a sort of symbolic Lot’s wife, wistfully looking back over her shoulder at both the pleasures and confusion of her younger self, but these visitations to the past bring about their own troubles, as anyone who has lingered in such a mindset will know only far too well.

After the opening sequence, the play is interspersed with anecdotes about Monica going to a boarding school run by nuns who tell the little girls to be “nice and respectful”, or meeting an exotic looking young man on a dancefloor in her twenties and other capers, such as having sex for the first time on a waterbed in New York.

O’Driscoll’s portrayal of this woman tethering on the brink, is very convincing and she plays the role of the fretting anxious housewife, who feels her life slipping through her hands very well indeed. The audience, mainly comprised of women, really got on board with the character from the opening gag and were laughing wholeheartedly throughout.

In addition to this, Monica’s tall frame and costume change to ‘soccer mom’ uniform both aided the humour in the scenes replayed from her youth and there were scarcely few taboo topics that weren’t covered in the course of the play’s hour-long duration, as she navigated all the trials and tribulations of becoming a woman; from getting her first period, her first bra, her first orgasm and so on.

A lot of the issues covered in this play are not ordinarily discussed on stage, and credit to O’Driscoll for managing to inject so much levity into the script. The eventual deterioration of her marriage, relayed through an ongoing double-entendre surrounding a faulty washing machine, while hardly the most sophisticated of jokes, also had the audience in stitches.

All of these incidents are set against a projection of images on the back wall by Cormac O’ Connor that were visually a great addition to the piece. Combined with Jamie Feehily’s usual high standard of simple but effective lighting, there was plenty to keep the audience’s attention throughout, which is especially important for a one woman show.

The ending of the play however, was deeply disturbing and not in a way that came as a surprise or a shock to the audience, but for the message it was sending out. It felt like a real misstep, especially as it contradicted earlier issues raised in the piece. Perhaps if this show were to be taken further afield, the writer and director might consider revising this section, as given what went before, it didn’t sit well at all.

And a final word on one glaring omission in the play. The word love was barely mentioned, if at all, by Monica. And the tragedy of this piece is that the laughter coming from the audience seemed to directly correspond to the amount of people who could identify with a similar lack of love in relationships of their own. 

As the play wore on, this realisation couldn’t help but leave you with a profound feeling of sadness and for all the jokes about sex and fumbling into womanhood, it was the under representation of love that left the greatest impression. 

JUMP!? Is at the Cork Arts Theatre nightly at 8pm until February 3. Pádraig O’ Connor is a writer based in Cork City.

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