Conor McPherson Sijoče mesto
Shining City, 2005
Drama

 

Translated by Alenka Klabus Vesel
Directed by Luka Martin Škof

 

Opening in February 2010
Premiere Slovenian performance

 

 

Ian is a psychotherapist with virtually nonexistent therapeutic skills. John is a widower whose days have no meaning and nights bring no sleep, and he is looking for a way out of an unusual predicament. Neasa is a young woman whom Ian had left and pushed into a difficult situation. Laurence is a boy who turns tricks for a living.

The leading motives of this superbly written play are: guilt, reconstruction of the past and an effort to start life over. There are five scenes taking place about a month apart. The timeframe of the story is the present.

We learn that it is not always the therapist whose help opens the patient’s eyes. We learn the lines spoken are not necessary where the truth lies. Quite on the contrary, we find it hidden between the lines. The silence carries as much meaning as the soliloquy. A slight, languished discontent can hurt worse than a sharp pain.  People are the focus of the story. The town in the title is just a stage, a well lit backdrop, with four confused human beings glowing in front of it.

 

In 2001 Connor McPherson was barely thirty, a bright star at the peak of its artistic fame. He had written ten plays (Dam being the most famous), worked as co-writer of three film scripts and won several awards. Following a serious health and personality crisis there was a pause in his creative work, but in 2005 he returned with the play Shining City, which preserves the two most prominent aspects of his writing: compassion and open-mindedness. Open to everything… even ghosts. Ghosts in broad daylight, or in the darkness of the night where a man is alone with his stories.