NIGHT TIME. A country road. Mark and Steve are training for the event of their lives. They find themselves running into their past and into their future.
Funny, energetic and brave, Eduardo Erba’s play Marathon is a beautifully simple exploration of what it means to be alive and has a twist in its tail that will stay with you long into the night.
Marathon arrives at the Town Hall Theatre next week in an acclaimed new production by Hurricane Theatre Company directed by Niall Cleary. Talking about the play over an afternoon phone-call, Cleary began by relating the happy coincidence whereby he first came across the script by Italian author Erba.
“I went up to Belfast to see Pauline Hutton in a play last year and I was rambling around the university bookshop and there I picked up a copy of Marathon which had been translated by Colin Teevan,” he reveals.
“I was actually starting training for a marathon myself at the time as it happened. I read the script going back down to Dublin on the bus and before I had arrived back I’d decided to direct it. So it was a happy accident that I found it.”
Cleary outlines the play’s thematic concerns.
“These two guys are training for a marathon,” he says. “One of them is training very reluctantly and the other guy is more or less dragging him along. You’re introduced to them as they’re warming up and for the next hour they are running. As they’re running, old wounds between them are being exposed. It’s a bit of a discourse on masculinity, you have these two men trying to express themselves but not having the tools to do so. They’re coarse and foul-mouthed. As they run on the play becomes more surreal. The running also becomes a metaphor for their life journey.”
With the play’s two actors having to run for much of its duration, clearly the physical conditioning of his cast was of primary concern for Cleary, as he readily acknowledges;
“A prerequisite of casting the show was that the actors had to have a certain level of fitness,” he avers. “Funnily enough, having gone to see Pauline Hutton in Belfast when I first found the script, I ended up casting her brother Brian in the play.
“Before Brian became an actor he was a fitness instructor so that helped a lot. Matthew Ralli, the other actor, is also a naturally fit guy. When I was doing background research on the play I read that in lots of other productions actors had ended up getting injured. So we were very aware of that going in, that you needed to be really careful with your body doing this show.”
While the play’s subject matter means it has drawn in some of the running fraternity who might not otherwise be ardent theatre-goers, Cleary asserts that it’s not just for some sporty niche audience.
“It does appeal to people who are running but it has a much broader appeal than just that,” he says, “you don’t have to be interested in running or sports of any kind to appreciate and enjoy it.”
Marathon is at the Town Hall on Monday January 31 and Tuesday February 1 at 8pm. Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777.
