This extraordinary performance had the audience enthralled and not a cough was to be heard for the full eighty minutes. It took me a minute or two to adapt to the tale, the language and the delivery but after this cognitive effort my concentration was engaged. Aoife Duffin's monologue takes us through the life of a girl from being a bump in her mother, through her sexual abuse at thirteen by an uncle to her eventual (we presume suicidal) drowning.
The setting is rural and very Catholic Ireland, full of double standards, guilt and accusation. The text is a near stream of consciousness but much easier to follow than a true stream might be. The delivery is relentless and at the end I felt exhausted. Goodness knows what Aoife Duffin must feel or how she accomplishes the task of remembering and delivering her lines.
All in all, this was an amazing evocation of the claustrophobia of rural family life, delivered with precision and plausibility.
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