It’s like the old gag:
My brother thinks he’s a chicken.
Then you should get him put away.
I would – but I need the eggs.
Written by Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe, and first produced in 2018, The Approach is about relationships. This might seem an absurdly naïve thing to say; after all, isn’t that what all drama is about, it being the artform best suited to exploring how we relate to each other?
But this work is fascinating in its seeming simplicity and focus. Through only a series of tete-a-tete conversations between friends, it forefronts our desire for human connections, despite the pathetic inadequacy of so many of these connections. It’s La Rochefoucauld, without the exuberance he derived from cynicism. The relationships portrayed in The Approach are filled with grievances, resentments, dishonesties and envies, and are maintained by characters who struggle for self-awareness, and who would probably choose to live without these relationships if they could.
Some people might suggest this is simple Truth; theatre at its most beautifully realistic. Perhaps. I’m not sure calling it Truth isn’t merely the romanticisation of garden variety misery. But, if it is, who am I to complain about how others cope?
It’s a finely wrought play, eighty minutes of tight, engaging writing. Director Deborah Jones keeps the production splendidly sparse, allowing her excellent cast to shine. It’s a joy to witness Linda Nicholls-Gidley, Lindsey Chapman and Sarah Jane Starr present these characters, like watching sunlight glimmer through the discarded pieces of a broken stained glass window. I use this ostentatious simile deliberately: the play presents a world in which individuals have seemingly lost the ability to look up. There’s one particularly poignant motif: a fourth character, who we never meet, who climbed a nearby mountain and lit a fire. In rich ambiguity, this serves as both a powerful image of troubled flight, and of the desperate need to go beyond.
Paul Gilchrist
The Approach by Mark O’Rowe
At Flight Path Theatre until Sept 2
https://www.flightpaththeatre.org/
Image by Abraham de Souza
Theatre Red 
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