HOWIE THE ROOKIE
HOWIE THE ROOKIE, Red Line Productions in association with Strange Duck Productions and SITC at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, 30 September-25 October 2014. Photography by Kathy Luu: (above) Andrew Henry and Sean Hawkins; right: Sean Hawkins.
Howie the Rookie was Mark O’Rowe’s breakthrough work in 1999 and it’s still powerful 14 years on. In this independent production it’s well served by director Toby Schmitz who would appear to be something of an alchemist in his relationship with the two actors, Andrew Henryand Sean Hawkins. This on account of his currently working in South Africa and Los Angeles and flying in and out, to work with them in the flesh, while casting spells via Skype the rest of the time. The end result says a great deal about the three, and all of it good.
The most recent production of the play – directed by the playwright – has seen the two characters of Howie Lee and The Rookie Lee performed by a single actor throughout, but Schmitz has chosen to stick with the original. It adds a grounding focus as the Rookie (Sean Hawkins) listens to Howie (Andrew Henry), occasionally sipping his beer as a deceptively placid presence – in sharp contrast to Howie’s febrile persona.
Henry/Howie opens the evening by doing the house manager’s auto-spiel – acknowledge the traditional owners, turn off all mobile phones, running time is 80 minutes, yada yada, etc etc – before launching headfirst into the rich verbal peat bog of the working class Irish voice. It’s a tour de force of memory, delivery and language and it’s like listening to Shakespeare: it takes a few minutes for the unaccustomed ear to recalibrate and tune in to the riotously thick brogue (voice coach Gabrielle Rogers: brilliant job). And then simply climb aboard and go along for the unruly yet poetic ride.
Howie the Rookie is two young men’s accounts of a couple of nights in their lives in Dublin city. As their rough and ready deeds are related, the images dazzle in a kaleidoscope of tumbling, twirling ordinariness. We learn of the awesome Avalanche, a monstrous woman of “sixteen stone, size forties on her chest, few tatts” whose sexual favours Howie has enjoyed once…or twice…maybe three times…well…
Then there’s Ladyboy, a gangster who not only keeps Siamese fighting fish but also has three rows of teeth – like a shark – and is owed money by The Rookie. Flan Dingle is another character whose personal stench is so sharply evoked it’s hard not to wrinkle one’s nose even as the image of the redheaded Ginger Boy – “red enough to stop traffic” comes briefly into focus.
Mainly, however, the action revolves around a mattress, since burned, on which Howie slept and caught scabies and his furious conviction that it was the Rookie’s fault because he had slept on it immediately before Howie. This itching outrage cancels out whatever feelings of fraternity originally were felt by Howie because of their “namesake in Lee-ness” – the late and legendary martial arts hero Bruce Lee.
In a sense, nothing much happens other than each man telling his story, but it’s a tribute to the subtle direction of the sizzling, barely-contained energy of Andrew Henry and the contrasting eye-of-the-storm calm of Sean Hawkins that gives the impression of constant movement, colour and drama. It’s by turns funny, confronting, alarming, heartbreaking and always mesmerising as the picture of hopeless, under-class city life is painted.
The emotional and aural performances are finely tuned however, and therefore what could be relentless or alienating in lesser hands is – in this company and this writing – never less than gripping in their clarity and intensity. The potency is aided by perfectly laconic costumes – zipped up Adidas rectitude for Rookie and tee-plus-hoodie for Howie and a simple setting (designer Lisa Mimmocchi) of a bare concrete space with just two chairs and a heap of crown bottle caps to catch the eye, and equally judicious lighting (Alexander Berlage) that quite literally illuminates their milieu without distracting.
Howie the Rookie is poetry at its most tactile and radiant, and in this intelligently spare and beautifully performed production, it is revealed as a rare feast of theatrical imagination. A short, sharp and shocking night that’s often brilliant.
