Her Father’s Voice
O’Reilly Theatre, Dublin 1
★★★☆☆
The actor turned playwright Shane O’Reilly is one of a number of hearing people across Ireland with deaf parents. These Codas – children of deaf adults – also include Declan Buckley, aka the drag performer Shirley Temple Bar, and the performance artist Amanda Coogan, a frequent collaborator with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf.
The children of deaf parents grow up using Irish Sign Language first and spoken English second. This unique cultural heritage provides a strong basis for Her Father’s Voice, O’Reilly’s hybrid theatrical and operatic work.
A layered family drama, it hinges on Sarah, a six-year-old deaf girl whose impending cochlear-implant surgery is the catalyst for soul-searching, agonised debates and startling family revelations.
Her parents are Carol, a trainee doctor played by Amy Molloy, and Frank, a stay-at-home dad and composer played by Colin Campbell. Like many of their generation, the couple have moved in with Carol’s well-to-do parents, Claudia and Darragh, after losing their rental property. Most of the narrative takes place on Sarah’s birthday, a day or two before her operation is scheduled.
In Her Father’s Voice, at Dublin Theatre Festival, emotions run high and understanding is in short supply
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The complex relationship between sound and communication is central to the play. Frank has begun to learn ISL to speak with his daughter; Carol has not. Another character, Marion, the deaf mother of Sarah’s best friend, appears in the middle of the night after a fight with her boyfriend, and regularly signs with Frank. Outside of this narrative, an ISL interpreter – the indefatigable Ela Cichocka, whom many will know – translates the performance for its deaf audience.
These formal and narrative elements set the stage for the show’s most ambitious experiment: a 20-minute operatic interlude, involving several singers and a classically trained ensemble, whose narration of a moving-image work brings the show to its final scene.
The role of composer is crucial to Her Father’s Voice. Tom Lane is an accomplished artist whose work spans theatre, opera and contemporary performance; his other recent work includes the score for the Olivier Award-nominated The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring Saoirse Ronan, at the Almeida Theatre in London. Lane’s score for Her Father’s Voice is strongest when pursuing a blend of the contemplative and melancholy, hauntedly asking if the surgery will radically transform Sarah’s identity.
Ultimately, this is the tension at the heart of the play: should Carol and Frank accept highly invasive surgery to give their daughter access to the world of spoken language, or should they embrace her deafness as part of her identity?
This is a rich and emotionally complex issue to wrangle with, but Carol and Frank – and the grandparents – are incapable of discussing much without resorting to sniping, sarcasm, affected ignorance or dismissive hostility. Emotions run high in Her Father’s Voice, and understanding and sensitivity are in short supply.
Runs at the O’Reilly Theatre, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, until Sunday, October 5th
