The plot of Grooming Veronica is pretty convoluted, but here is an attempt to summarise it. The Taoiseach of Ireland (not Brian Cowen but an entirely fictional one!) has had a stroke and sits paralysed in a chair tended by a nurse who revels in not doing her duty and being as negligent as she is cheeky towards the family of the vegetated leader. The said incapacitated political chief is uniformly hated by his two daughters, Veronica and Fran, and his wife Hilary. Furthermore, Fran (who is also a heroin addict) claims both she and Veronica were sexually abused from age four to 14 by their father even though Veronica has no recollection of any of this.
Needless to say, the leader of the country, Harry Hellman is also corrupt in the usual political ways. To get as far away from her father’s world as possible, Veronica (Louise Guyett), though a law graduate, works as a checkout girl at Tesco and is hitched to the affable but lazy layabout Garret, played by Dean Brown, who delivers one of the more convincing performances in the show. After her father’s paralysis circumstances are against Veronica, and out of a sense of powerlessness she agrees to be groomed to replace her father by two Machiavellian figures Fred (Justin Keys) and George (Paddy Campbell).
Director and writer David Scott intends all of this to be the ingredients for some delightful anarchistic stage fun and sharp political satire. In his programme notes he suggests that the only way to deal with politics is through comedy. The main problem with Grooming Veronica is that it can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be serious or funny. It also ignores the famous tenet of black humour as expressed by the English playwright Joe Orton that “comedy is a deadly serious thing.” Thus it is that, rather than being sinister, dark and powerful presences, Gareth and George are ridiculous and more like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee than heavy-hitting manipulators. The idea as well that a leader of a country could have a nurse as negligent as the one here also lacks credibility. Even to be funny, characters need to grip and captivate. And the portrait of the sexy beautician Kimberly (Vivienne Connolly) would have been downright offensive to eastern European people if it weren’t so farcical. Only Lena McLoughlin as Fran emerges unscathed by Scott’s lacklustre direction.
As Grooming Veronica proceeds, the various twists and turns in the plot are hopelessly unconvincing. When this is allied to the fact that too many characters are not believable at any level, then you have a situation where the audience is not engaged and both the seriousness and the humour falls flat. It is also a serious error to try to stage a funny play when the central issue ultimately turns out to be child sexual abuse.
The intention behind Grooming Veronica - to stage a scathing and surreal political satire - is laudable in itself. Sadly, though, good intentions alone do not a succesful play make. Grooming Veronica can't make up its mind whether it wants to be dark and serious or light and throwaway. It ends up being neither and, thus, never quite hits the spot.
Patrick Brennan was chief theatre critic and arts writer with the Irish Examiner from 1990-2004. He is a journalist and critic and is currently writing a book on the theatre of Tom Murphy.