MADE BY GOD
by Ciara Ní Chuirc
Directed by Olivia Songer
Irish Repertory Company
Reviewed by David Spencer
I can’t quite make up my mind about Made By God, currently in the downstairs space of the Irish Repertory Company. Playwright Ciara Ní Chuirc, in a program note, states that she wanted to write a play about how sweeping societal change affects people, particularly people whose beliefs don’t commensurately adjust, and she hasn’t precisely done that.
Set mostly in County Dublin, Ireland, the play is told in two timelines: one following the early-mid ‘80s story of teenage Mikey (Daniel Marconi) and his 15-year old girlfriend Ann (McKenna Quigley Harrington), who would split up with him and face pregnancy alone and afraid (Mikey is absolutely the proverbial good lad, wanting to help, even though we never know if the baby is his); and the other in early 2018, with an older Michael (Ciara’s Byrne), being interviewed about Ann’s fate and his part in the story, by American Eva (Erica Hernandez) for a Christian-themed podcast. Watching over both time-lines is an irreverent Virgin Mary (Briana Gibson Reeves) who, rather like The Christ in Giovanni Guareschi’s Don Camillo stories, can be received as an independent character, but really only exists as a conscience-reflection of the characters who would turn to her.
There are interesting reversals on the expected: At first, you expect small-town Michael to reflect conservatism, but he’s become even more open minded, since reaching adulthood. And—also at first—you expect tech-savvy Eva, from a big American city, to have a more catholic and less Catholic outlook…but as the play proceeds, she only doubles down on a myopic view.
But this confuses the issue, because she’s not from Dublin, or that community. We don’t know about the particular memory demon that haunts her until about midway through the play—the Oh that’s why she’s so fascinated by Ann’s story reveal—and as an outside observer, she seems more like a cipher stepping out of the bounds of her structural function than a help to the play’s intended theme. This isn’t helped by the playwright deliberately keeping the enigmas about Ann’s fate unsolved. Even odder, Eva the outsider is the one unable to make peace with that, while Mikey/Michael has long since come to grips with it, if never quite easily. So we’re never actually seeing drama about sweeping societal change carrying one person with it and leaving another stubborn and stranded; but rather a drama about the nature of faith in a right to life vs free choice debate. And in that, it covers no new territory.
All of which makes, Made By God feel like the very young play that it is.
The good news: It holds stage (Ms. Chuirc is not without potential), it’s well acted and by Olivia Songer, decently directed. It’s never dull and it’s nobody’s disaster. It just isn’t quite anyone’s victory either.