A whole village brought to life in brilliantly daft comedy
REVIEW: The Determinator at Townhall Cavan
To stand alone on stage for over an hour and dramatise a comedic story must be one of the most demanding challenges in acting.
On Friday night Charlie McGuinness excelled in meeting the challenge in John McManus’s wonderfully daft comedy The Determinator as shown by the instant standing ovation volunteered by the near capacity audience in Townhall Cavan.
In addition to playing the lead character of Herbie Hoctor, a native of Connemara who was running from his past to hole up in the “blink and you’ll miss it village” of Dowra, McGuinness inhabited the personas of a whole village with such deftness the viewer would be forgiven for forgetting it was a one man show. No doubt Padraic McIntyre’s direction helped achieve the illusion as McGuinness, dressed in a garish orange sweatshirt and with only a fold-away chair for company, seemingly filled the stage.
McGuinness brought inexhaustible energy, physicality and a whole wardrobe of accents that ranged from the pure culchie to the frankly curious, and even a smidgeen of Schwarzenegger. They perfectly delivered McManus’s lines which displayed his pitch perfect ear for colloquialisms and creative swearing.
The opening section established the fairly grim existence of hard drinking, Metallica loving Herbie in the cheapest flat in Ireland above a funeral directors. His only pals are limited to Jackdaw - the proprietor of his local pub - and the Big McGovern, a Pajero owning sheep farmer and a weakness for Columbian prostitutes on tour. Herbie’s nemesis is Gollum - a curious character, and since I confess to missing the opening minutes, I honestly didn’t know what to make of him.
The play felt well advanced as a funny portrayal of rare lads (Dowra’s female population were spared) locked into a mundane rural existence before the plot’s driving element was introduced: the prospect of Herbie’s ex-girlfriend Sarah getting married the very next day in New York. The play’s title comes from the ex-couple’s shared love of The Terminator and the classic ‘80s movie quietly echoes the epic quest our shambolic hero suddenly faced with the odds hopelessly stacked against him. How he embarks upon this quest was ingeniously funny, and surprisingly half plausible.
While the play might not help Dowra’s tourism product, The Determinator was hugely enjoyable, and showcased the skilful penmanship of McManus and McGuinness’s terrific acting prowess.
After the rapturous reception The Determinator received on Friday night, you can be sure of one thing: It’ll be back!