Theatre review: Who killed Fungie?
Aaron O’Neill’s murder mystery set in Dingle seeks to resolve what the locals want kept under wraps. It plays until June 22 at the Granary Theatre.
There is a lot to like about Bottlenose: A Murder Mystery for Ireland, Aaron O’ Neill’s latest play, which sees a host of colorful characters entwined in a complex web of crime, secrets, and suspense all revolving around one central question. Who killed Fungie the dolphin?
Set in the touristic mecca of Dingle in County Kerry, the play combines classic elements of detective caper with a running commentary on the changing face of rural Ireland, as dim witted, but likable detective Frank Finger (O’ Neill) takes on a case to solve a mystery the locals seem intent on keeping under wraps.
The action begins with the arrival of Fungie's widow, the aptly named Velvet Nixon (Gillian Roberts) into the detective's office, who pleads with him to find the perpetrator of the murder. Finger is entranced by Nixon’s sultry charm and agrees to go to the seaside town to find answers to a puzzle which has the entire nation enthralled.
As Finger gets to work, he encounters a number of shady individuals beginning with the fascist priest (Kyle English), who gives a memorable sermon at Fungie’s funeral. English nails the slippery country clergyman and has his thick Kerry accent down to a tee, all the while giving Finger no clues as to what happened to the money making mascot of the region.
As well as this, interspersed between scenes are old video clips of the television soap opera Glenroe, advertisements for Lyons tea, and mock interview footage with locals in the aftermath of the demise of their famous dolphin.
While you’d be right in thinking this might sound all a little absurd, I can imagine that for many, one of the pleasures of Bottlenose is that it never takes itself too seriously as it blends hard-boiled detective tropes with a sharp satirical edge.
The dialogue throughout the play brims with wit, the characters are larger than life, and the setting of Dingle offers a clever backdrop to the unfolding chaos as its metamorphosis from idyllic country town to tacky tourist destination is examined.
Indeed some of the gags in the play are laugh out loud funny and it’s no exaggeration to say that O’ Neill is easily the best comic writer at work in theatre in Cork at the moment and both his own performance and Roberts are highly commendable. However, the play is not without it faults.
For all its clever jokes and witty one liners it suffers the same fate as O’ Neill's previous work The Pigeon Factory in that it needed some serious trimming down. Whether that should come in the form of a stronger directorial influence in the rehearsal room or even earlier in the script development is debatable, but Bottlenose could really have done with being paired back.
It clocks in at one hundred and thirty five minutes minutes including an interval and while I’ve been to some fifty minute plays that seemed longer, for the sake of the story and the audience this time still needed to be reduced as there were a number of scenes that simply weren’t necessary.
Had the production been about twenty minutes to even a half hour shorter, it’s likely the audience would’ve been in raptures at the end, but the plot was dragged out a little too long and the storyline became farcical to the point of becoming uninteresting. Some of the minor characters were also a tad cliched and poorly cast.
This is a pity, because there is certainly talent at work here, but whether O’ Neill is to take the next step and move beyond merely good, solid funny writing, remains to be seen.
Bottle Nose: A Murder Mystery for Ireland runs until June 22nd as part of Cork Midsummer Festival. For more information on tickets please see here
I LOVE that there is a constructive criticism in this review. Too often reviewers are wanting to not be seen as critical. Yet this is how one learns.