How the World Began by Catherine Trieschmann
Arcola Studio 2 - until December 10

In a small town Kansas community that has been ravaged by a tornado, three characters are caught in a dispute that evolves into a full on clash over fundamental convictions.

New Yorker Susan arrives in the community to contribute her skill and experience to the recovery programme, also to leave a situation behind and start over with anonymity. A pregnant, single, female newcomer of course sticks out like a sore thumb. Micah, her student, objects to a cavalier comment made by Susan in class that implies his Creationist beliefs and those of his whole community are ‘gobbledygook’. The young boy is bearing the loss of his family in tandem with the huge burden of, what his religious convictions tell him, must be his role in this ‘natural disaster’.

Anna Francolini gives a poignant portrayal as Susan. Although at times perhaps condescending to this community, her character has the necessary rationalist outlook to juxtapose the creationist viewpoint she encounters. Playing Micah, Perry Millward’s youthfulness, calm demeanour and moving emotional torment make for a well played counterbalance to Susan’s rationalism. The sense of his conviction combined with the vulnerability of his character is eerily powerful. Micah’s guardian Gene represents compromise. He is more interested in holding the community together and ‘rubbing along’, as long as Susan can keep her views below the radar; a position neither she nor Micah can accept. Ciaran Macintyre portrays Gene as limited but without malice. His many ham-fisted but well intended actions show genuine human compassion for Micah whom it is suggested may have attempted suicide, and for Susan despite her ‘condition’ and her single status, never mind her views.

Subtle direction from Des Kennedy allows the emotion and intellectual debate to develop at a natural pace. Designed by Alison Cummins the set is an enclosed low-ceilinged temporary classroom. In direct contrast to the natural Kansas environment of the wide open skies and sense of vast emptiness, it reflects the suffocation of a community where everyone knows everyone and exists within strict limitations.

The combination of dilemmas examined by Catherine Trieschman in How the World Began, reaches beyond small communities and Creationist views. Susan and Micah in that sense represent our world with ideological differences central to World politics. The play does not offer a solution for how to reconcile rational thought and religious belief in the face of disaster and a crisis of human emotions, this lack of resolution rings true to life.

Bryony Hegarty

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