Last night (Feb 13th), I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff to participate in a discussion following the play Dublin Carol by Connor McPherson. Art, of course, is a means for transmitting powerful human truths and the play was a bleak and poignant exploration of addiction. It starred Simon Wolfe as John, an alcoholic undertaker and Siwan Morris as his daughter. The play takes place on Christmas eve as John encounters a visit from his daughter and who he hasn't seen for many years and is forced to confront his past. What emerges throughout the play is a drama that we see at the Living Room Cardiff on a regular basis, adults lost in addiction who have grown up with pain and trauma as children and are prisoners to this suffering throughout their lives.
John recounts during the play that he was terrified as a child by his father's own alcoholism and violence against his mother, but in turn he had grown up to be his daughter's own emotional abuser. She recounts to him the shame of living with an alcoholic father and how it affected her life. In one recollection she describes to her father the experience of being picked up from the school gates by him whilst he was drunk and then ending up in the pub on the way home. The shame and the fear that the child felt came across powerfully in Siwan Morris's performance.
The play effectively articulates the reality of alcoholic behaviour (showing that alcoholics invariably put their own need to drink over the needs of their children) and the harm this brings to children in later life. Subtly, the conversation brings out the details of John's daughter's later encounters with men. She found herself attracted to another alcoholic, seeing in him the father who could never fully love her as she had needed as a child.
It was great to be able to discuss alcoholism and addiction along with the play's assistant director Hanna Noone and Dr Márta Minier who lectures in drama at the Atrium USW. Together, with the audience we explored the complex inter family dynamics that occur when addiction is present.
Photography by Mark Douet